E-Mobility Engineering 014 l InoBat Auto dossier l In Conversation: Brandon Fisher l Battery monitoring focus l Supercapacitor applications insight l Green-G ecarry digest l Lithium-sulphur batteries insight l Cell-to-pack batteries focus

partners, we provide all the knowhow and audit the suppliers,” he adds. “We provide the chemistry and the recipes, we have all the processes documented, we own all the intellectual property and the production protocols – all the way from slurry to coating and formation – and we control the steps and the quality of the samples.” He emphasises though that InoBat Auto expects to continue technological collaboration with its Asian partners, even after the facilities in Slovakia to make cells in different sizes and formats are up and running. Phased development Development of the facilities near Bratislava is planned in three phases. The first is focused on building the r&d Volta 2 will also serve as a stepping stone to larger gigafactories, in that the same processes and equipment will be used to scale up production for these new facilities. The company is currently going through a selection procedure to choose between candidate sites in eastern and western Europe for its third plant, whose capacity could be up to 32 GWh. The semi-automatic pilot line in Volta 1 is to be installed as a turnkey solution supplied by partner Wuxi Lead. It is semi-automatic, in that all the cell production steps from slurry mixing to coating and formation are carried out automatically, but between each step and the next the partial cells are transferred between machines manually by technicians. “That way we ensure that quality is very high,” Krokos says. “When we provide samples to customers, the first cell and the 1000th cell are exactly the same with automated manufacturing.” In addition to sample small pouch cells, Volta 1 is intended to be able to produce sample cells in different sizes and formats, and space has been set aside for another assembly line for them. Production capacity will be between 15 and 20 MWh per shift, which translates to between 50,000 and 70,000 cells a year when running one shift in the 9000 m 2 facility, Krokos says. “We can increase production according to demand, but these numbers will be sufficient to support various customer development programmes through one year,” he says. With a starting capacity of 1 GWh, Volta 2 will be a 40,000 m 2 facility, so it will have space to double its capacity, producing both pouch and prismatic cells. The pouch line will be able to produce cells of different sizes, MacAndrew notes, but the situation with prismatic cells is more complicated. “It’s not that easy to produce different cell sizes unless you have different assembly lines,” he says. centre with its laboratories and a semi- automated pilot production line. Called Volta 1, this facility is due to be commissioned by the end of this year, with trial production of sample pouch cells set to begin in January 2023. The cells it produces will support customers’ battery development programmes, Krokos says. The laboratories will be commissioned and in operation this September. In the second phase, the company plans to build a new plant next door to serve as a ‘pilot gigafactory’ that will be commissioned in 2024. Known as Volta 2, it will have a maximum capacity of 2 GWh, and is intended to supply customers with low production volumes. The InoBat Auto team Although a young company, InoBat Auto has built an expert C-level team with extensive experience in breadth and depth in automotive, aerospace and electrical engineering as well as advanced manufacturing. With more than 28 years in the automotive industry, Doug MacAndrew began his career with Rover Group, then spent 8 years at McLaren, developing and delivering the SLR hypercar and its derivatives for Mercedes, followed by the MP4/12 family of supercars. He has been involved in EVs for 14 years, a period in which he served as CTO at Smith Electric Vehicles, a start-up truck electri ication business in the north of England that produced around 1000 certi ied EVs plus a similar number of prototype and development vehicles. For the past 7 years he has worked in Slovakia on EVs and electric aircraft, including eVTOL machines. He joined InoBat Auto two-and-a-half years ago to focus on industrialisation, technical development and building the company’s engineering team. An electronics engineer by training, Iain Wight worked on the development of military aircraft navigation systems before moving into the automotive sector with Bosch for 6 years in the early 1990s at the advent of full electronic management systems in vehicles. Participation in club racing led to a move to Pi Research, which became Cosworth Electronics, where he spent 8 years working on data and control systems in multiple formulae at the highest levels of motorsport. In 2003, he began a 14-year stint at Ricardo, joining as business development director and inishing as director of transmissions for the company’s performance products group. During that time, the group developed transmissions for Bugatti’s Veyron and Chiron hypercars as well as most of Porsche’s motorsport transmissions, in addition to systems for Le Mans, World Rally Championship and Formula One cars. Ricardo’s development of the transmission for Jaguar’s CX75 hybrid supercar brought Wight into contact with Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE), to which he moved as business development director 5 years ago. At WAE he focused on electri ication and battery development, working on systems for e-bikes, a 2 MW hypercar and much in between, he says. He joined InoBat Auto in early 2022 at the invitation of CFO Paul Hancock, with whom he had worked at Ricardo. “One of the biggest challenges we faced at Williams was supplying the right cells, and it is going to be a massive challenge in the future,” Wight says. “By joining InoBat Auto, I knew I could play an interesting role doing something about it.” Pavol Krokos has extensive experience in construction and inance. Before joining InoBat Auto, he ran several modular building projects in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. He managed multi-million Euro projects for major customers, taking responsibility for their inances and working directly with investors and banks. Summer 2022 | E-Mobility Engineering 29 Dossier | InoBat Auto