The UK Government’s Faraday Battery Challenge has awarded funding for a £1m project led by About:Energy to develop advanced models to extend vehicle lifetime. The consortium, along with Imperial College London and Arrival, will develop physics-based models to lower total cost of ownership and carbon footprint of automotive battery systems.
Predicting lifetime and performance degradation is one of the greatest challenges in lithium-ion battery research due to the complexity of chemical ageing processes. Empirical and machine learning models are commonly used in industry but provide less insight than physics-based methods and have limited application. By considering the physical processes that contribute to battery ageing in models, new design and operating strategies to improve lifetime can be found, and asset valuation can be improved.
“We aim to provide the tools needed to accelerate the electrification of new industries,” said Kieran O’Regan, COO and Co-Founder of About:Energy. “For commercial vehicle fleets, the measure of success is not range or acceleration, but cost and environmental impact.”
This project builds upon ongoing research by the Electrochemical Science & Engineering (ESE) at Imperial College London that has progressed the state-of-the-art in characterisation and understanding of battery degradation. Through the partnership, About:Energy will translate world-leading research into models and a cloud-hosted data repository capable of addressing key industrial challenges. The technologies will be evaluated and exploited by Arrival, a UK-based commercial electric vehicle manufacturer, to improve the lifetime of its vehicles.
“Understanding battery degradation is crucial to improve reliability of electric vehicles,” said Trishna Raj, Battery Data Scientist at Arrival. “Predicting battery lifetime under various operating conditions aids in improving pack design and providing warranties to our customers.”
About:Energy is hosting a public launch for its software platform in London. The Voltt will provide access to data and models for hundreds of commercial and bespoke batteries, allowing organisations to streamline their R&D by providing access to battery data that would otherwise require substantial engineering expertise and overhead to acquire. This project will help the UK reach Net Zero targets by improving the cost-competitiveness of electric vehicles and lowering their lifetime carbon emissions.
About:Energy
About:Energy is a battery technology company headquartered in London and founded to accelerate the electrification transition. We equip organisations with the tools needed to streamline their R&D, reducing time-to-market and enhancing battery system performance. Our proprietary characterisation and modelling capabilities provide access to world-leading research to inform better decision-making across the value chain, from mine to end-of-life. We have partnered with organisations across the automotive, manufacturing and aerospace industries to solve battery research challenges that include system design, lifetime prediction, and recyclability.
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