Fighting the flood of waste at the battery factory

A battery cell factory initially produces one thing above all else: waste. "80% waste is not unusual in the first year," says Tal Sholklapper, co-founder of Voltaiq. Founded in 2012, the Silicon Valley-based company specializes in quality assurance in battery production using data. The problem: it takes three years for many battery plants to reach an acceptable level of quality and run stably with an error rate of ten percent - which is still a lot.

In car manufacturing, errors are measured in the thousandths of a percent range. Not so in cell production for battery electric cars. Voltaiq has developed software that can process the large data stream from production to keep rejects within limits and improve the quality of new battery plants more quickly. "The target is ten percent rejects. Some plants take three years to get there," says Sholklapper. Far too long. This is because it involves high costs, which ultimately flow into the price of a traction battery for electric cars. If the vehicles are to become cheaper, the error rate must be contained.

"With their years of experience, Chinese manufacturers are able to reduce the error rate much faster," says Sholklapper. For example, BYD has been manufacturing batteries for phones, computers and now also for its own cars for 20 years. A high reject rate delays the break-even point being reached - which is particularly painful with an investment of 5 billion euros.