Our Epic Ascent Up Battery Mountain...

"The quick wins have come from improved cell packaging, manufacturing economies and reductions in materials costs. The next steps will have to be delivered by innovation"

Professor Dave Greenwood 

Photo - Autocar

That quote above comes from a man who knows a thing or two about batteries, and came whilst the good Professor was talking recently to Autocar's Steve Cropley (link here)

Incidentally, Dave was my boss, mentor, and friend at Ricardo, where he headed up the Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Team ( I truly landed the right way up on my lucky feet when I tumbled out of BEV Truck start-up Modec back in 2011) We had many exciting adventures together including a memorable trip to Better Place in Israel back in the day!

So, to the good Professor's point, if you've ever climbed a mountain you'll know that progress gets harder and slower the closer you get to the top - and in terms of battery progress, we've done all the base camps - and we are now closing in on the summit! That's why I've embarked on a battery series here on LinkedIn - to discover who the electron mountaineers are, what they are doing, and when they might plant a flag at the summit!

And so to Southampton!

This is 'Team Ilika' - and they are all super busy on the solid state battery quest - wowzers!

In other words, they are progressing batteries that don't have a liquid state - a liquid electrolyte. They are making batteries that have a solid state - a solid electrolyte. Progressing to solid state will deliver greater energy density, enhanced safety, low leakage current, long life, and overall greater operating efficiency. That operating efficiency is particularly critical in terms of ambient temperature of course, as currently EV batteries have a tendency to deliver a 'dual range'...one in Summer & one in Winter. It's an issue.

I say progressing...they already have product in market as they've now deployed miniature solid state batteries into industrial IOT settings.

A penny for your thoughts...

For the big batteries EV's inevitably require, it is still at WIP - Work-In-Progress - and there's an interesting timeline on that critical path.

Whilst nobody I met when I visited the lab had an ice pick to hand or crampons on their feet, they were all clearly 'electron mountaineers' from what I saw...getting ever closer to the battery summit! There was a palpable sense in the room/lab full of smart people that they have a collective ambition to deliver the big breakthrough, that they loved their work, that they knew it was important endeavour. I liked witnessing that!

Ilika CEO Graeme Purdy and another man in a white coat

Graeme was showing me an interdigitated electrode chip (of course I knew what it was before he explained that! - ha ha!) The display case showed several of the other functional chips that are being tested to show their ionic conductivity...and it was at this point that I wished Professor Greenwood was by my side so I could whisper to him that it was all starting to whizz way over my head! ( I didn't let on to Mr Purdy at the time, but I've been busy reading up on it all since my visit!)

As we walked around the facility, Graeme explained that the key work underway at their facility each and every day was threefold:-

1. Composition of materials
2. Materials Structure
3. Functional Properties

We had a show and tell tour of the place and I got to see the people, products and processes. Also useful to note that they are partnering on a couple of The Faraday Battery Challenges, namely:-

• MoSESS: Multi-optimal solutions for energy storage systems, with McLaren, A123 Systems, and WMG.
• The PowerDrive line: Development of a solid state battery pilot line, battery management system and materials supply chain for plug-in hybrid and battery electric vehicles, with UCL, Ricardo, Honda, and cpi.

Without doubt, they are forensically focussed on the enabling energy storage technology that will accelerate IOT and EV adoption, so I came away from my battery lab tour with Graeme & Co garnered with a genuine sense of excitement - for their company, their partners, and shareholder enterprise, and confident that the UK's role in accelerating things will be pivotal.

I made a lot of notes and observations from my afternoon in a white coat, but for now this is a brief summary of my visit - but with a bonus video for you that I also made!

As my old boss suggests - battery progress is all about innovation from here on in, and as materials innovation is at the beating heart of that, it seems Ilika are very well placed to my mind!

In the meantime, if you have any recommendations or requests for further battery visits I might make do let me know...I already have a few others up my sleeve but the more the merrier!

And as ever, if you have been - thank you for reading! (yes I've nicked it Robert!)

Roger

And there's more on batteries and other stuff I stumble across right here