UK EV Battery Pack Manufacturer, Ionetic Launches Production at its Pilot Plant

UK EV battery pack startup Ionetic has unveiled production at its pilot plant in the country. The startup manufactures Ionetic EV battery packs for low-volume car manufacturers. According to Yahoo Finance, the startup launched manufacturing work as part of its strategy to expand projects with manufacturers.

Making OEMs Effective

Ionetic’s EV battery pack pilot plant is located in Brackley in Northamptonshire. At this plant, Ionetic will be producing an EV battery pack called Arc Fab Pilot. This battery pack uses advanced battery technology to significantly reduce development costs for EVs and the time-to-market for EVs. By doing so, the Ionetic battery solution reduces the risk of developing custom battery packs for car makers. It also eliminates the need to provide a local approach to battery-pack production considering the uncertainty in the EV industry.

Ionetic’s new pilot plant, which is a 5000 square feet facility, will serve as the startup’s industrialization center and global headquarters. In its first phase, the facility will create 30 high-skill job opportunities. The company expects to have the facility fully functional by the third quarter of this year. This will allow the company to provide specialist original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to companies that produce buses, commercial vehicles, and trucks with cost-effective, rapid, and high-quality tailormade EV battery packs.

“With EV adoption accelerating, OEMs need effective, flexible battery solutions. By embedding agility into the core of our production model, we’re removing the most significant barriers to custom EV battery production; cost, time, risk and scalability. Arc Fab Pilot will be the first step towards unleashing the potential of our Arc technology stack, allowing us to produce custom battery packs at a speed and price point that the current market simply doesn’t allow for, from right here in the UK,” Ionetic CEO and Co-Founder James Eaton said.

British and US Clients

The EV battery pack startup spent about $6.3 million to set up the plant. Ionetic is expanding production at a time when it is producing EV batteries for multiple automakers in the UK and the US. Ionetic focuses on lower-volume EV makers that produce a range of products that cause them to struggle with the cost of developing EV batteries.

These are automakers that manufacture sports cars, commercial vehicles, buses, golf carts, off-road vehicles, and even beach buggies. Ionetic is targeting lower-volume manufacturers making everything from buses to commercial vehicles, sports cars, off-road vehicles and even golf carts or beach buggies that would struggle with the expense of developing EVs.

“The really big players can throw hundreds of millions or even billions at electrification. But around 90% to 95% of manufacturers are small and don’t have hundreds of millions of pounds to go electric,” Eaton said.

High Production Costs

Leading global EV manufacturers have promised to invest hundreds of billions of dollars toward the development of electric vehicles. However, the production of battery packs and the software systems that run them remain the most costly and complex part of EV production.

According to Eaton, car manufacturers can plan on spending in excess of 30 million pounds to produce in-house electric vehicle battery packs. However, his startup can develop an Ionetic EV solution for less than a million pounds.

With its EV battery pack technology, Ionetic creates a middle ground in the market and bridges the gap between high-cost custom solutions and off-the-shelf solutions whose performance is often compromised. The company makes customer EV battery packs accessible and affordable for specialist manufacturers.

“We want customers to spend as little as possible to get to production with a great battery pack. At a time when diversification in the EV battery pack market is more important than ever, our mission is to reduce compromises for our partners and make custom battery production accessible, adaptable, and aligned with the future of mobility,” Eaton says.

Ionetic is currently undertaking a research and development project with Alexander Dennis, a bus manufacturer unit in the NFI Group. The EV startup also has an ongoing partnership with Rockwell Automation, an industrial automation company. This company allows Ionetic to supply software and hardware products to Rockwell. Already, the startup is testing a digital twin software for Rockwell.