Voltaiq and Novonix have announced a strategic partnership they say will drive efficiency and quality in the battery industry.
Voltaiq provides battery quality analytics software, while Canadian firm Novonix is a battery materials and technology firm.
“Their product records battery heartbeat, Voltaiq interprets it,” was how Tal Sholklapper, chief executive officer and co-founder of Voltaiq summed up the deal, during a webinar in advance of The Battery Show in Detroit this week.
“Domain-specific software designed for the complexity and variability of battery development and scale-up enables companies to operate more efficiently – catching defects quickly both in gigafactories and in battery quality and validation testing labs. We need to ramp up the global battery industry to guarantee affordable, safe batteries for all,” Sholklapper said in a related release.
“That’s why we’re partnering with industry leading suppliers like Novonix who work with established battery makers including Panasonic, LG Energy Solutions, Samsung SDI, and SK Innovation to supply materials or support their cell development projects.”
Sholklapper sounded alarms during the webinar that North American battery producers risk falling further behind China. This will require the digitization of batteries, he added, noting a battery should be viewed as “a living, breathing organism” with a heartbeat.
Constant monitoring of battery health will be required going forward. Voltaiq’s software serves as an EKG of sorts, which can provide warning signs regarding quality performance and overall battery health.
Sholklapper noted North American battery makers have made certain missteps in the early years of the proliferation of new electric vehicles, allowing Chinese manufacturers to take a sizeable lead in terms of scaling up production at lower costs.
Early on, he said, car makers thought they could easily begin battery production themselves. Meanwhile, “China was in the background doing all the heavy lifting and subsidizing domestic production and domestic materials production. Today, China is dominating. They have economies of scale.”
Battery factories outside China have struggled to achieve yield and quality, he contends. “China has this large head start at this point. How do we keep up with them and build a domestic industry?” Sholklapper asked.
He believes the answer is in digitization, so battery health can be monitored and issues responded to immediately. “Quality, in particular, is now going to be the big thing that’s going to differentiate [suppliers],” he said.
“Data is everything to us,” added Lori Mcleod, Novonix president. “Data is king. We need to make sure it’s trustworthy data, organized and accessible across many groups so it can be fed up to executives for good decision making.”
The two companies say the partnership will involve: integration of Voltaiq’s analytics platform into Novonix’s battery materials development programs; enhanced quality control and defect detection capabilities in gigafactories and battery research labs; and improved efficiency in battery development cycles, leading to faster time-to-market for new battery technologies.
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