Ionetic, a UK-based start-up supplying EV battery pack solutions, is launching an AI-supported system designed to considerably reduce the time and costs in developing customised packs.
CEO James Eaton told BEST in an interview that the software-accelerated system, Arc, integrates software, hardware and manufacturing technology to automate design. It also optimises battery packs for specific requirements.
“People should enjoy electrification!” he said. “Ionetic wants to lower the barrier to electrify the vehicle sector. Normally there are two options: to buy a battery pack off the shelf or to spend a big amount of money to create a solution from scratch. Essentially, I listened to car and vehicle manufacturers about their challenges and problems with electrification.
“Everyone wanted a tailormade battery pack, but they could not afford it. Around 95% of OEMs are small and as the volumes are small, they cannot afford $30 million development programmes.”
Arc is an ambitious attempt to organise the design of core components in the battery pack to achieve faster results. According to Eaton, the customer needs to tell Ionetic the key properties of the battery pack, usage, performance, costs, need for optimisation etc.
“Battery chemistry does not matter, we can adopt all new batteries, e.g. cylindrical batteries, in Arc. Ionetic is platform independent and that must be so, given the huge growth and fast development in the battery sector.”
As a 2½ year old start-up with 17 employees, Ionetic has insight in the challenges the OEMs face. “The product we sell is a battery pack tailored to your needs. You pay for the services – a development phase takes a certain amount of work hours, but Arc can reduce the time from the expensive initial battery pack design to the final product.
“The processes are in many cases still very manual, and the systems are combined piece by piece. We take a validated system and components; the software makes the process simpler and cheaper.”
Eaton said Ionetic is excited to deploy Arc in 2025 and further including battery factories. “The feedback to our approach has been good, the challenge to design appropriate battery packs is significant for many companies. Our concept is suited for vehicles on and besides the road and we want to deliver the lowest development cost for the best products globally. We also expect to announce a substantial investment within the very near future.”
