Don Newton, Group Technical Director and member of the UK Automotive Technology Council, talked the ministers through the details of Axeon’s advanced battery system featured in the exhibition, which is promoting UK manufacturing excellent and showcasing UK expertise in low carbon vehicles, which will be situated at BIS until 25 March.
Axeon is Europe’s leading provider of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and the battery on display uses Lithium Nickel Cobalt Manganese (NCM) cell chemistry in polymer pouch cell format, which until recently have not been used in automotive applications.
The programme to develop the battery was developed with part-funding from the UK government’s Technology Strategy Board and also involved another UK-based automotive technology supplier, Ricardo, which developed the battery electronics and Battery Management System. The project ultimately aimed to develop an innovative high energy density battery system for an emissions-free electric small city car.
Lithium Nickel Cobalt Manganese (NCM) is a variant of lithium-ion chemistry that has particularly high energy and power densities. Being built into large format high capacity cells allows packaging of the battery in a limited space and also provides high power output.