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“Voltaiq is making it possible for all stakeholders of the data to view the live results as they are collected. Even better, the analyses, specific views, and conclusions can be shared instantaneously and dynamically.”
– System Engineer, Top 5 Global Automaker
More and more automotive companies are embracing the shift to electrification. But with relatively new technologies come risks and challenges, some of them daunting. Batteries are very complicated, and ensuring their safety and reliability is a big ask.
One of the Top 5 Global automotive companies was facing significant technology blockers, of the kind that could lead to a long time to market and expensive product recalls. In need of optimizing their operations, the leadership received a clear message from engineering: a key problem was their inefficient battery data analysis.
What were these difficulties with battery data analytics? And how did Voltaiq help the automaker overcome these obstacles and maximize the performance and reliability of their battery? Read on to find out.
The Challenges of the EV Industry
Automotive companies that are joining the EV future need to test hundreds if not thousands of individual battery cells, modules, and packs. This process is highly complex, because each type of battery is unique and has various chemicals and other components.
Data analytics is the only way to understand how batteries work. Large volumes of batteries have to be properly tested – otherwise, batteries may be unable to perform optimally.
However, when confronted with massive amounts of data, engineers can easily become overwhelmed – causing the battery data analytics process to become tedious, inefficient, and time-consuming. This manual and slow battery analyses may cause limited insights that lead to cell failures, or worse, battery-triggered catastrophes such as fires.
News of EV battery fires have sparked lawsuits and recalls, and created unease among the general public. Research says EV batteries only have a 0.3% chance of igniting (as opposed to a 1.5% chance in internal combustion engines) – but there’s no doubt that battery fires present a significant challenge to any EV manufacturer. Once a lithium-ion battery starts igniting, it can be a real challenge to put out.
At a Top 5 Global Automaker, prior to Voltaiq, precious engineering resources — which could have been spent on all-important product development — were wasted due to inefficient battery data analysis.
Wasted Resources, Wasted Time
The engineers at this certain Top 5 Global automaker were struggling with battery data analysis. They couldn’t afford to squander time and effort on this process. So they requested help from Voltaiq. Our team conducted a pre-implementation survey to better understand the automaker’s troubles.
According to the findings of this survey, 91% of the automaker’s battery engineers struggled with data handling. Another barrier mentioned by 64% of engineers was data silos. These hampered battery workflow by taking too much time gathering and preparing data. Time was squandered on extensive Hybrid Pulse Power Characterization (HPPC) analysis – a process to determine how much power can be practically pulled out or put in at each battery charge level. Upon analysis at the Top 5 Global automaker’s processes, each HPPC test took between one and four hours to complete; a process which can take less than an hour using an efficient battery analysis solution. For the Top 5 Global automaker, the HPPC test had to be performed thousands of times per vehicle program. As a result, under its previous battery analysis program, its projects took weeks to finish.
Access to data was also limited to other teams, so when engineers needed data, they had to navigate a maze of file servers, or wait for other teams to share the data they requested. Manual data extraction was widespread, and the insights gleaned from the data were limited.
The result: there were cell failures detected late – bad news for any EV company. Late detection of EV battery issues can result in significant warranty losses and multi-billion dollar recalls. Or if a battery design problem is discovered late and it requires significant changes, it can take another year or so to re-qualify the changes. When 18-month launch delays are not unheard of, this can equate to billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Supercharging Battery Data Analysis with Voltaiq
“To go from 1 to 4 hours per HPPC test analysis to less than an hour – this is pretty significant for our team. It would take me two weeks to get the work done, but with Voltaiq I’m able to do it all in under an hour without any thought.”
– Systems Engineer from Top 5 Global Automaker
The pre-implementation survey painted a clear picture, and the Voltaiq team understood the automaker’s concerns. Right away, the deployment of Voltaiq’s Enterprise Battery Intelligence ™ (EBI) Platform began.
The EBI system now helps engineers with everything from qualifying new battery cells and suppliers to the testing of full EV packs containing hundreds or thousands of cells. With the help of Voltaiq’s fully-automated EBI platform, the company’s systems engineers have shaved off hundreds of hours per program. Automating vital analysis tasks – like tracking and evaluating the properties of each battery component, or assembling a battery’s full performance history– has enabled them to pull powerful insights from large datasets.
Voltaiq’s battery history tool can process 500+ data files per minute, whereas the company originally took 4 hours to manually process just 5 data files.
This newfound agility has allowed the automaker to radically streamline their product development and meet launch deadlines.
Now that the automaker can potentially detect cell failures early in the process, Voltaiq’s solution has also increased their overall confidence in their products. Now, the company worries far less about EV battery issues and expensive recalls. With this new battery data analysis process onboard, engineers are much more confident that their batteries are functional, safe, and of high quality.
“Compared to previously where searching our existing data management tool is a mess and the manual upload of data is slow. Voltaiq gives us much, much quicker access.”
– Development Engineer, Top 5 Global Automaker
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“Voltaiq completely changed our battery defect detection process, allowing us to catch defects within hours of production and quickly pinpoint the upstream issue. This saved us months in scaling up production. I can’t believe how many weeks wasted and batteries we had to scrap before.”