German company IAV was already working on bipolar batteries long before the topic gained industry-wide attention. In an exclusive interview with Battery-News, IAV’s Senior Technical Consultant and Tech Sales Manager Michael Clauß explains where the technology stands today and what advantages it promises for future vehicle architectures.
Battery-News: IAV is known for holistic vehicle development. What does that mean in concrete terms when we talk about modern electric mobility today?
Michael Clauß: IAV was founded in 1983 as a start-up company out of the Technical University of Berlin – with a strong vision for innovative drive technologies. Since then, we have systematically and continuously expanded our range of services. Today, we see ourselves as a holistic tech solution provider, which means that we are not just a classic engineering partner but that we also design our customers’ products – from the initial idea to the concept, system architecture, and series development through to market launch. Our responsibility does not end there either: We accompany our customers throughout the entire life cycle of their products, support fleet operations, analyze operating data, and contribute to optimization in the after-sales area.
“We were faced with significantly more complex, nested installation spaces in the vehicle sector.”
Battery-News: Your company has been working on bipolar batteries since 2014 – long before the topic received industry-wide attention. Where does this technology stand today and what advantages does it promise for future vehicle architecture?
Clauß: Based on our many years of experience in battery development, we and our partners had already recognized back then that battery systems for vehicles had to be completely rethought. While we already had highly integrated battery systems for consumer goods such as smartphones, we were faced with significantly more complex, nested installation spaces in the vehicle sector. This challenge was the starting point for us to develop a completely new cell and system design. Over the past ten years, we have worked intensively on material innovations – including integrating graphite and NMC materials into our cell architecture. At the same time, we have succeeded in building up a strong partner network with more than 100 companies, ranging from material development to mechanical engineering and industrialization. The first production facilities are now ready, and we have been able to solve challenges such as tightness and safety in the vehicle environment. We are particularly proud of our successful projects with well-known German car manufacturers, with whom we continue to work intensively on vehicle integration.
Battery-News: What advantages does IAV’s technology offer?
Clauß: It enables up to 30 percent lower internal resistance, more than 20 percent higher energy content and significantly improved sustainability by dispensing with conventional cell housings. At the same time, the compact design allows a significantly reduced system height – a real game changer for modern vehicle architecture.
“Electric mobility can only develop its full potential if it is also more sustainable than conventional technologies – both ecologically and economically.”
Battery-News: You have been pursuing eco design concepts since 2019. What specific requirements does this entail for battery development – for example, in terms of modularity, reparability, or choice of materials?
Clauß: Electric mobility can only develop its full potential if it is also more sustainable than conventional technologies – both ecologically and economically. It was precisely with this in mind that we launched our Eco Design program in 2019. The starting point was a detailed analysis of the material compositions of battery systems and their greenhouse gas potential. At the same time, we sought to engage with numerous recycling companies in order to better understand their challenges and develop practical solutions.
Battery-News: How has this evolved?
Clauß: Our first goal was to create a battery system that causes fewer emissions, is easier to disassembly, and offers an economic advantage. We already achieved these goals in 2020 with Eco Design 1.0. In the next step, we dealt intensively with the “second life” topic and integrated the corresponding requirements into a further developed Eco Design. In doing so, we have always been guided by real vehicle and stationary storage batteries and derived requirements from them, such as a service life of more than ten years. One specific lever was the replacement of aluminum with steel, which in our case led to around 50 percent fewer emissions. The modular structure in steps of 25 kilowatt-hours also allows for scalable solutions – especially for industrial stationary storage systems. Overall, our development enabled us to cut structural costs by around 30 percent and reduce the greenhouse gas potential by around 50 percent, compared to standard market concepts. This shows that sustainability and cost-effectiveness are not mutually exclusive – on the contrary, they are mutually dependent.
“Today, we no longer just talk about vehicle development – we talk about software-defined vehicles.”
Battery-News: Data-based development, fleet analyses, and virtual test benches are currently changing the industry. How do you use these approaches in battery development in particular – for example, for service life prediction or safety assessment?
Clauß: Today, we no longer just talk about vehicle development – we talk about “software-defined vehicles”. For us at IAV, this means that software is the key driver of innovation, efficiency, and safety. All our methods and tools are geared towards making the use of resources as efficient as possible throughout the entire development process. This begins with cell development and production, continues with the precise component design of the overall system and culminates in a holistic powertrain synthesis. Virtual vehicle models replace many classic design loops, as we simulate at an early stage what had to be laboriously tested in the past. We use test bench measurements in a targeted and selective manner. At the same time, our physical models predict the aging behavior of individual components over time. In use, we monitor entire vehicle fleets using a cloud connection. This allows us to detect safety-critical anomalies in good time – often weeks before they are even noticeable.
Battery-News: Can you give us an example?
Clauß: For instance, we can detect abnormalities in individual cells in the battery system at an early stage and initiate appropriate countermeasures – long before a thermal runaway is even remotely possible. For the customer, this ultimately means maximum availability, a high level of safety, and a vehicle that simply works. The technological effort remains in the background, the focus is on convenience.
“To make fast charging even more convenient and powerful, new material combinations in the cell and significantly more efficient cooling concepts are needed.”
Battery-News: Topics such as “thermal propagation prediction” or “immersion cooling” show how closely safety and thermal management are linked to each other. How do you reconcile these concepts with packaging, cost, and maintenance requirements?
Clauß: For us, innovation is not an end in itself – it is our constant driving force. At the same time, it is the customer who clearly defines the direction of travel with their requirements for performance and charging speed. This results in specific technical challenges: In order to make fast charging even more convenient and powerful, new material combinations in the cell and significantly more efficient cooling concepts are needed. In the premium segment, we often go one step further: There, we work with directly cooled cells in order to achieve the physical optimum – an approach that is more cost-intensive but makes perfect sense, especially for sports cars. Regardless of the segment, however, we see our strength not only in making innovations technically possible, but also in bringing them to series production in a cost-conscious and time-efficient manner. In other words, we combine high-end technology with industrial feasibility.
“We consistently look at the entire system – not only from a safety perspective, but also with a view to efficiency and sustainability.”
Battery-News: With its “N-in-1” power electronics, IAV is moving towards integration. To what extent does battery development have to be aligned with the power electronics architecture today – and what does that mean for the future?
Clauß: The battery is not only one of the vehicle’s performance-determining components but also one of the most valuable – so it is sensitive and worthy of protection. At the same time, we must not forget that all peripheral systems also contribute significantly to the overall cost structure. That is why we consistently look at the entire system – not only from a safety perspective, but also with a view to efficiency and sustainability. An important lever lies in the electronics architecture: Highly integrated control units make it possible to centralize functions from different individual components. This allows computing operations to be carried out in a powerful central control unit that would not be technically or economically possible in distributed control units. Only safety-relevant functions then remain in the components – which not only makes them safe, but also leaner, more cost-effective, and more sustainable. Another step is the relocation of certain functions from the central control unit to the cloud. This allows fleets to be intelligently networked, functions to be retrofitted on the software side, and optimizations to be made even during operation. The result for the customer is a system that is not only secure and efficient, but also future-proof and flexible.
“The ideal battery system of the future will not only be sustainable and standardized but also highly networked, safe, and transparent.”
Battery-News: What will the ideal vehicle battery look like in five to seven years’ time – not just technically, but also in terms of sustainability, safety, and system integration?
Clauß: Vehicle batteries have long been more than just energy storage for the drive. They are a central component of the energy transition. The ideal battery system of the future will not only be sustainable and standardized but also highly networked, safe, and transparent. It will be flexible to use in different applications – from vehicles to stationary storage – and deliver real added value in mobility and the energy industry. New cell chemistries such as sodium-ion batteries can be an exciting alternative, especially where cost and availability are key. For particularly power-intensive applications, we also consider solutions such as twin batteries to be very promising. What counts in the end is: What the customer needs must be sustainable, affordable and, above all, quickly available. And that is exactly what we are working on.
