Automotive Engineering - March 2024 - 7

TECHNOLOGY REPORT
added that at that point, a few percentage
points of yield improvement
can mean hundreds of millions
in revenue. Siemens brings its deep
experience in systems that monitor
and control manufacturing processes,
such as with programmatic logic
controllers (PLCs). Such controllers
can automatically make small adjustments
in the chemical and physical
processes of building battery
cells and packs based on Voltaiq's
data analysis.
What it all translates to is being
able to halt and fix a problem earlier
in the manufacturing process,
resulting in less time and money
lost. " We'll take the insight from
Voltaiq and put it into the control
process, making it a fast iterative
loop, " said Raymond Kok, Siemens'
senior vice president of cloud application
services.
Sholklapper said Siemens' reach
and stature in the business could
more quickly help make more manufacturing
plants better. " They have
the scale to help this go global, " he
said. The companies said the partnership would help in five
areas: quality control/consistency, increased production, process
efficiency and waste reduction and high costs.
Unlike most manufacturing, where there can be a " set it
and forget it " approach to production, batteries are incredThe
list is a look at the manufacturing steps of EV batteries. The cycle depicted is the cycle of
analysis and process improvement that ultimately leads to low scrap rates and more profitable
yields for factories.
ibly complex, almost like living things. " Battery making is
dozens of processes that have extremely narrow tolerances, "
said Eli Leland, Voltaiq's chief technical officer. Leland also
said that these long new-factory learning curves are not
new. " It took us 125 years to get the internal combustion engine
to run for hundreds of thousands of
miles without problems, " Leland said, adding
that there just isn't a ton of modern battery
expertise, particularly at some OEMs. " The
core competency here is learning how to
learn, " he said. Why greatness takes so long
Sholklapper said that the manual process of
testing newly manufactured batteries takes
too long. " Batteries are made, charged and
discharged multiple times, and then put in a
hot room for up to three weeks. " If the voltage
drops, there's a short somewhere in the
batteries, which means you have to fix it.
And as you've been making batteries for
three weeks, then they all may have to be
scrapped. "
The goal of the partnership is to marry
Voltaiq's and Siemens' software to allow corrections
to be made more quickly, before
three weeks or a month of manufacturing
time and money is lost.
Voltaiq CEO Tal Sholklapper and CTO Eli Leland speak to journalists in Las Vegas at CES 2024.
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
Chris Clonts
March 2024 7
FROM TOP: VOLTAIQ/SIEMENS; SAE/CHRIS CLONTS

Automotive Engineering - March 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive Engineering - March 2024