Voltaiq, a battery software platform company, has released an industry survey, Preparing for The Electrification Tsunami, that examined many of the challenges battery manufacturers, suppliers, and integrators currently face.

Conducted in Q1 2019, the survey polled battery cell producers, battery pack and component developers, academic and national labs, and companies involved in transportation, consumer electronics, and energy storage.

When asked to name the biggest concern regarding their most recent battery project, the number one answer – given by nearly 35% of respondents – was time to market. When asked to note the biggest bottlenecks in their workflow, respondents’ answers fell into three main categories:

• Scarcity of expertise and resources: Nearly 40% of respondents cited a shortage of battery engineers as a constraint on their development work. More than 44% of respondents noted that there were insufficient resources for the number of battery projects underway.
• Time-consuming evaluations: Nearly 27% of respondents listed the amount of time required to estimate battery life as a key bottleneck. Nearly the same number – just over 25% – said there were too many battery vendors to evaluate, while more than 20% said there were too many battery materials to evaluate.
• Data challenges: Survey participants also highlighted their difficulties working with battery data. More than 22% cited the challenge presented by data silos: information they needed was out there, but not readily available to their team. Another 17% noted problems with data quality: the required data was often messy, inconsistent, or hard to use.

“The EV market represents the largest segment of growth for the battery industry, and auto manufacturers certainly aren’t immune to any of these challenges,” said Voltaiq CEO Tal Sholklapper. “It all starts with the battery. And unless these challenges are addressed, the scarcity of resources, industry expertise, time to market constraints, and the inability to efficiently analyze data to help improve performance and range of EV batteries could have a significant impact on the growth of the market and wider adoption of electric vehicles.”

Source: Voltaiq