How ION Energy Is Enabling a Multinational Electronics Company to Accelerate India’s EV Transition
Our customer is a multinational electronics company with an interest in the Indian EV andelectronics ecosystem.
The Indian automobile industry is one of the fastest-growing markets globally, yet it justconstitutes 0.5% of the global EV market. Although the sector witnessed a significantdevelopment towards the all-electric transition in the last two years, the growth is yet to meetthe expectations of the EV industry in the country.
As the government has set a target of 30% EV adoption by 2030, the country tackles multiple challenges like the high cost of EVs, lack of charging infrastructure, battery manufacturing capabilities, and range anxiety, which has resulted in a lower rate of adoption. Additionally, theCOVID-19 lockdown has massively hampered EV sales, as manufacturing has had to come to a grinding halt.
Deployed
Deployed
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Challenge for Maxwell
The EV space in India is expected to be driven by two and three-wheelers. Tapping into India’s mobility future, our customer aims to propel the EV transition by addressing the EV charging needs with the help of battery swap models and setting up local battery pack manufacturing facilities in the country.
Battery swapping is expected to decrease upfront costs and accelerate adoption in specific categories of EVs. The technology intends to increase available run time, eliminate wait time for charging, reduce battery size, and minimize the total cost of ownership (TCO). The model is likely to be adopted for two and three-wheelers.
Here’s why EV makers bet big on battery swapping technology:
Battery swapping technology reduces range anxiety.
Swapping stations can pack up to 15-20 ready-to-use battery packs. With adequate stations in place, the number of EVs that can access a swapping station as compared to a charge point is 10x.
Fast charging could lead to battery life degradation. Swapped batteries can be charged in a controlled environment to extend battery life. In the swapping business, the life of the battery will determine the commercial viability and success of the model. The longer that battery swapping companies can maintain a battery’s performance, the better is the ROI on every asset.
Adoption by e-rickshaws stems from the fact that their routes are more standardized, making it easier to identify locations where swapping stations would see sufficient demand.
With a three-phase launch plan in place, the customer intends to design batteries for electric two and three-wheelers and will continue to build battery packs for public and private transportation in the future and potentially expand their presence in 10 key cities.
Let’s take a look at the customer’s core challenges:
The customer started their search for a reliable partner who understands the Indian EVmarket and has deep domain expertise in energy storage, electric mobility, and technology.
The initial phase involved building a minimum viable product (MVP) for their customers – thebattery swap station managers, to enable easy availability of electric power.
In the second phase, the customer plans to upgrade the MVP’s design to scale up and beginsmall-volume manufacturing at 300-5000 battery packs.
In the third phase, the customer has plans to build new custom models and types of battery packs with an integrated BMS board. Depending on the success of phase 2, they plan to ramp up the quantity of battery packs to extend their trials and deploy them on the road across tenkey cities in India, through battery swap stations.
Solution - Riding The Electric Transition
With a clear vision to increase battery manufacturing capacity in the country, they reached out to a few companies which are at the forefront of EV technology. ION Energy emerged as an obvious choice to help launch operations into the Indian electric mobility market for our versatility and capability in battery design, management, and analytics. At ION, our approach is to provide a technology platform that leverages software analytics and AI to improve lithium-ion batteries’ life and performance. ION enables serious battery pack makers and OEMs to accelerate the development of BMS independently.
The customer relied on the CTO’s expertise – Alexandre Collet, who leads the engineering team at ION, as we had previously designed UDYR – India’s first swappable battery pack. The customer was looking to build a similar product, which helped them decide on a partner.
ION Energy’s innovative ‘Electronic Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)’ model offers the customer a unique DIY Battery Management System (BMS) design platform that lets companies get their own advanced BMS at a reduced cost and helps advance their product from design to market in as little as three months.
The customer is working with us in all three of our service verticals – battery pack designing, battery management systems and battery intelligence platform. ION is enabling them to design the entire battery pack, providing them with off-the-shelf BMS and PDU solutions. We are pairing our BMS and PDU solutions with Edison Analytics for predictive maintenance of their battery packs.
As the customer is trying to eliminate the constraints of charging and expensive overheads of owning a battery to facilitate two and three-wheeler EV adoption, we successfully helped deliver the MVP to enable easy availability of electric power to EVs at battery swap stations. This meant that the user could access a ready-to-use battery and only pay for the cost per kilometer.
After successful completion of the first phase, we worked with the customer to upgrade the parts and designs, and scale up to small volume manufacturing. We helped them design and manufacture 300 battery packs in the second phase. The project involved heavy hardware, mechanical, and BMS customization.
Product deployed
System voltage range 12 - 900VDC
Cells managed per board 6-10 cells (FSLT-10S) 9-15 cells (FSLT-15S) 15-25 cells (FSLT-25S)
Cells managed per system 6-340 cell modules in series
Communication CAN 2.0 A&B for system integration Bluetooth 4.1 for Android dashboard
Customer Testimonial
We are thrilled with the response to our launch! We found ION Energy to beextremely reliable and their solution was smarter and technologically advanced.We’ve seen compelling improvement in cell balancing and battery performance.ION’s platform worked exceptionally well and was 5x better than our existing BMS!
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