Britishvolt joins with researchers for new battery tech

The UK's flagship giga-factory Britishvolt has announced a two-year extension to its partnership with the University of Warwick and Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) to develop, test and scale up new battery technologies.

A multi-million-pound project will focus on developing new battery chemistries and cell designs intended to increase the power density and cycle life of the battery packs Britishvolt produces for the UK electric vehicle (EV) market.

Design changes are likely to define Britain's demand for metals such as cobalt, nickel, lithium, manganese, graphite and others used in battery cells.

"With Britishvolt we are looking at a whole range of solutions, from low-cost, near-term solutions for the mass-market cars today, through to high-energy density solutions for premium cars today and in the near future," said David Greenwood, chief executive of high value manufacturing catapult at WMG. "Even moving on to look at solid state batteries, which will take over those high-energy-density markets in the medium term." Different battery chemistries are suitable for different parts of the EV market. A small city car, for example, is more suited to a lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery chemistry or lower-nickel cathode because it does not need a long distance per charge and the cost is lower, which is why they have proliferated in Chinese cities. Higher-power batteries, including nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) with a high ratio of nickel to manganese and cobalt, such as 8-1-1 or 6-2-2, are more suited to EVs which need to travel longer distances or that are larger, such as sport utility vehicles. Argus assessed prices for NCM8-1-1 cathode active materials at $97.99/kwh on 21 June, down from a high of $113.83/kwh on 22 March as battery metals prices peaked. Since, China's lockdowns have caused a fall in demand for nickel, cobalt and lithium, bringing the prices of cathode active materials down. "The battery science, advanced materials, and cell prototyping expertise and capability at WMG have directly and positively supported our battery technology development programme," said Allan Patterson, chief technical officer at Britishvolt."This gives us not only an excellent basis to progress from, as we seek to scale and commercialise our technologies, but the relationship also enables Britishvolt to continue to develop our products further." Britishvolt is working towards a 38GWh cell manufacturing plant by the end of the decade, producing in excess of 300,000 EV battery packs per year. They are scheduled to release an A-sample battery cell to customers this year.

By Thomas Kavanagh