Ionetic launches pilot battery production in the UK
Reuters first broke the news following an interview with CEO James Eaton. He told the news agency that his firm is already working on EV battery packs for a range of automakers and hopes to enable dramatically quicker time-to-market for customers that might otherwise struggle with the cost of electrifying their vehicles.
Eaton added that while automakers could typically expect to spend upwards of 30 million pounds (€36m) on an in-house battery pack, Ionetic had the capacity to develop them for under a million pounds.
“The really big players can throw hundreds of millions or even billions at electrification,” said Eaton. “But around 90 to 95% of manufacturers are small and don’t have hundreds of millions of pounds to go electric.”
Ionetic describes itself as a “software-accelerated battery developer.” According to the company’s website, it can bring custom battery packs to market in about half the time “than ever before,” while reducing development cost by 80 per cent or more. First launched in 2022, the company offers a suite of AI-augmented tools, hardware components and fabrication technologies called ‘Arc’, which promises rapid iteration and deployment of custom battery packs.
Ionetic has already announced an ongoing partnership with bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis, as well as a number of other companies currently under non-disclosure. Its goal is to pave the way for more specialist EVs from a much wider range of manufacturers.
The company has grown rapidly since its creation, hiring former staff from the likes of McLaren, Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Aston Martin, and Imperial College London. In 2023, it appointed former Nissan COO Dr Andy Palmer as its Chairman, who said at the time: “I have witnessed first-hand the need for more cost-effective battery pack solutions that can still meet the performance criteria of automotive OEMs, especially in lower volume. IONETIC is doing just this, and I have great belief that its offering will significantly reduce the challenge and headaches of electrification for OEMs.”
Article by Ciarán Daly
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