Twaice opens new battery lab in Germany
Twaice is expanding testing capacities with a new battery lab in Munich, reacting to rapidly increasing demand. The equipment includes hundreds of test channels, several temperature chambers and in-house developed test equipment for battery cells and modules.
With the battery laboratory at the company site in Schwabing-Freimann, Twaice creates additional capacity to the resources already available at partner institutes. As is well known, the company wants to take battery analysis to the next level. The focus is on predictive battery analysis software developed by the start-up. It should make it possible to evaluate the overall condition of lithium-ion batteries in real time and to predict their lifetime by means of a so-called digital twin of the battery. The software thus addresses a previously unsolved problem of e-cars: when they are resold, the remaining service life and thus the economic residual value can hardly be estimated.
The aim of the laboratory expansion is now to deliver the software to customers more quickly. In the new facility, batteries of electric cars have recently been tested and simulated. At temperatures ranging from -20 to 80 °C and a current of up to several hundred amperes, Twaice can analyze the behavior of a wide variety of battery types and chemistries and thus quickly calibrate the software. “Our customers really appreciate us as the one-stop-shop for battery analytics, powered by the combination of battery expertise and scalable software,” says founder and CEO Dr. Michael Baumann. “The TWAICE battery laboratory enables us to produce quick test data and calibrate our software to electric, thermal and aging behavior patterns.”
Twaice has already raised 11 million euros this year in a Series A financing round. The money comes from the venture capitalist Creandum and the existing investors Cherry Ventures, UVC Partners and Speedinvest. After more than four years of research, the start-up company, which was founded in 2018 as a spin-off from the Technical University of Munich after four years of research, intends to use the fresh capital for its long-term internationalization and scaling. The 11 million euros complement an investment of 3.2 million euros previously provided in a seed round by Cherry Ventures, UVC Partners and Speedinvest.
According to its own statements, the start-up has now “won leading customers from the automotive industry, truck manufacturers and power tool suppliers”. The majority of customers come from the energy and mobility sectors. In addition, there are several partnerships: At the end of 2019, the startup initiated a cooperation with the German technical inspection association TÜV Rheinland in order to enable a manufacturer-independent evaluation that offers sellers and buyers of used e-cars urgently needed security. Recently, Twaice teamed up with the Dutch telematics provider ViriCiti to optimize the operation of electric bus fleets and increase their residual value.
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