Ilika plc (LON:IKA), a pioneer in solid-state battery (SSB) technology, announced it has started a nine-month series of manufacturing equipment trials to further de-risk its industrialisation plan for its Goliath large format cells for electric vehicles. The Automotive Transformation Fund, the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC)’s funding programme dedicated to supporting the large-scale industrialisation of an electrified automotive supply chain in the UK, is supporting the trials with UK-based equipment vendors using representative volume manufacturing equipment, designed to validate Ilika’s scale up plan.
Ilika will receive a £175,000 grant towards its related costs over the nine-month Project (codenamed STEP), which started on 1 August 2022.
The project follows two recent successful APC-funded industrialisation projects, SOLSTICE and BUS100. The SOLSTICE project between Ilika and Comau, part of Stellantis and a world leader in the industrial automation field, concluded that there were no cost or technical barriers to scaling-up Ilika’s Goliath solid-state battery technology for electric vehicles and delivered a plant design for a mega-scale manufacturing facility. The ongoing BUS100 project is a collaboration between Ilika and the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) to determine the economic feasibility of placing a 100MWh SSB line at UKBIC to enable Ilika’s Goliath electric vehicle batteries to be manufactured at scale. Building on the experience obtained at mega-scale, Ilika plans to continue to scale up production to Giga-scale in collaboration with cell manufacturing partners through joint ventures or licensing.
Ian Constance, Advanced Propulsion Centre CEO said: “I am pleased that this project has been successfully funded, sharing part of £15 million from our Scale-Up Readiness Validation competition. With this support, the APC aims to increase confidence in large-scale manufacturing investments to build electrified supply chains in the UK. It is vital, in the transition to net zero, that the automotive sector seizes the opportunity to grow the industry, create or safeguard jobs and build on the expertise anchored here in the UK.”
Graeme Purdy, Ilika CEO, stated: “STEP is a crucial part of Ilika’s industrialisation journey and provides a great opportunity for Ilika to work with UK-based equipment vendors in these trials – to both further Ilika’s ambitions to scale its technology and to develop the all-important SSB supply chain.“
