Spinouts join forces on technology to accelerate electric vehicle development

The companies plan to use existing test data and AI to accelerate the development of EV battery packs - Electric vehicle makers could save up to 18 months development time using technology under development by Imperial spinouts About:Energy and Monolith. The technology spinouts are partnering to develop pre-trained AI models that would allow car manufacturers to predict how their battery pack designs will perform, reducing the need for slow and costly trial and error and reducing the time it takes to bring a new model to market. Understanding how batteries degrade over time is currently a costly and risky process that car companies handle internally by ageing thousands of batteries for over a year. The new solution under development will use battery test data from About:Energy 's labs and Monolith 's AI tools to predict how long a battery pack will last, allowing car companies to save time and costs by outsourcing complex degradation test plans that are traditionally completed in-house. Battery data meets machine learning. Collaborations like this are what university innovation is all'about: two great pioneering businesses working together to combine their tech, creating jobs and driving us to a low-carbon future. Dr Simon Hepworth Director of Enterprise, Imperial - "Our partnership with About:Energy allows us to build more accurate models predicting battery degradation and thermal runaway, using the most robust and reliable battery test data available to engineers," said Dr Richard Ahlfeld, CEO and founder of Monolith.