Innovate UK and the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) are looking to invest up to £10million in a consortium to develop a pilot line that will help to understand the issues involved in the manufacture of high voltage electric vehicle batteries.
The consortium must include, or develop as part of the project, all the skills and capabilities required to consider how to produce whole battery packs for a variety of on road and, optionally, non road vehicles. These capabilities should include, as a minimum:
- cell handling
- design, development, assembly, testing and validation of complete traction batteries to production level quality, safety and robustness
- electronic control hardware and software
- charge flow and thermal controls, mechanical and environmental modelling, simulation and testing
- physical and electrical integration.
- The successful consortium should include a research organisation, at least two vehicle manufacturers, at least one industrial supply chain partner and at least one SME.
The partners will be required to develop a pilot production line that will be used for developing the processes necessary for complete battery production. The pilot line should be capable of producing a variety of traction battery types and the consortium should understand how it could be scaled up for high volume production.
According to Innovate UK, the project is likely to have total costs of £15m to £20m.
The two stage competition opens on 20 April 2015 via a written application, which should be submitted no later than 1200 on 3 June 2015. Selected applicants will then be invited for interview.
There will be a competition briefing and consortium-building event for potential applicants at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull on 15 April 2015 and the winning consortium is set to be announced in August 2015.
Author
Graham Pitcher
Source: www.newelectronics.co.uk