According to IONETIC, the Arc development system can slash the typical ~$30m investment and four-year development cycle required for bespoke EV battery systems from tier 1 suppliers by automating the design and integrating pre-validated components into a fully end-to-end battery pack development system.
The Arc system has been developed to enable IONETIC to rapidly deliver cost-effective, performance-optimised battery solutions that meet customer and commercial needs both faster and with less risk.
Commenting James Eaton, CEO and Co-Founder of IONETIC, said, "As the push for electric vehicle adoption accelerates, OEMs need the right partners to bring competitive electrified vehicles to market as fast as possible. IONETIC’s Arc system allows us to provide OEMs with pre-validated, tailored solutions – enabling them to remove inefficient development processes, focus on vehicle innovation, and eliminate the usual bottlenecks of cost and time.”
Battery pack development is one of the most time- and cost-intensive challenges when it comes to bringing an EV to market, on-schedule and at an affordable price-point.
At present, OEMs needing between 100 and 10,000 battery packs a year are typically faced with either using expensive and time-consuming, highly bespoke battery packs, or low-performance off-the-shelf solutions.
Arc enables IONETIC to deliver batteries to OEMs that combine the best speed and affordability of off-the-shelf solutions with the flexibility and performance of bespoke designs – helping to reduce time, cost, and development challenges.
The system achieves this by integrating three elements:
Software: A network of AI-accelerated design tools which remove manual, iterative human design engineering. Instead, Arc rapidly optimises, conceptualises and brings-to-life the battery pack’s design, facilitating significant time- and cost-reductions.
Hardware: Arc is built around a pre-defined design system, including a number of pre-validated systems and components, all whilst supporting multiple different cell formats. This reduces both programme risk and validation time, whilst remaining highly flexible.
Fabrication: Rather than requiring large up-front investment and bespoke manufacturing lines, Arc utilises an innovative, flexible manufacturing system. More akin to the approach taken by semiconductor fabricators, this allows IONETIC’s production facility to serve multiple different customers, without the time and costs typically required for new-line set-up.
With 95% of the world’s OEMs producing low-volume bespoke platforms such as trucks, buses, and sportscars, IONETIC’s AI-supported, end-to-end approach will help them to access high-performance custom battery packs without the usual costs and complexity.
