Cell to Pack Battery Design - James Eaton (Ionetic)

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Today we are talking to James Eaton. He is the CEO of a British tier one battery pack company, named Ionetic. His company manufactures packs, modules and designs custom-made solutions for minor automotive OEMs. James Eaton spent four years working in battery pack research at Imperial College London. Ionetic‘s goal is to „help automotive companies make the electrification transition with great engineering solutions at a price point they can afford."

Ionetic uses its ARC battery pack design platform in order to file their customer's needs and requirements. The plattform then delivers suggestions of electronic architectures, number of cells, chemistries and all other characteristics in terms of height, width and length. With this approach, Ionetic reaches a plus in performance and a decrease in volume.

Many existing commercially available battery packs have energy densities of around 150 Wh/kg. A Tesla Model 3 for example has a module energy density of 197Wh/kg and a pack energy density of 156Wh/kg. That is considered high-price battery technology. With its efforts to decrease unused volume waste Ionetic states to have constructed a battery module with "an energy density of 226Wh/kg." And a "pack energy density of at least 180Wh/kg is targeted.“

"Cell to Pack" vs. "Cell to Vehicle"

Ionetic's business of "Cell to Pack Design“ is based on not wasting packaging matrial and using as much space as possible within the battery module/pack. "Cell to Vehicle (so, filling up every inch of the vehicle‘s body with cells) requires much more communication between engineers", says James Eaton, "and is more expensive and potentially more difficult for maintenance and safety."