As the Automotive sector rapidly moves towards electrification there are significant barriers to OEMs and tier 1 suppliers investing into electric motor manufacturing capability, these involve concerns over market adoption rates but also the technical risk and commercial funds required to build the capability. Project PIMMS addresses these concerns through validating a range of manufacturing processes related to electric motor manufacturing and developing a commercial model that makes it accessible. The project partners are Electrified Automation, TVS Motor UK, TEKTowr and Aspire Engineering.

The Bellerophon Rapid Assembly and Disassembly (BRAD) project will deliver a quad bike powered by maintainable and reusable batteries, with a concept manufacturing process which reduces manufacture and remanufacture time, providing cost reduction for efficient battery system assembly thus providing an electric powertrain in a market which is dominated by Internal Combustion Engines. Many quad bikes are petrol with a small percentage using diesel as the fuel. Around 1 million quad bikes were produced in in 2019 and less than 15,000 were electric, all are E-UTV. The last study showed that in 2010 18 million tonnes of CO2 was emitted from quad bikes and this figure is expected to have risen since. The proof-of-concept phase of this project is complete with a UTE battery system designed for addressing the circular economy and reducing Bill of Materials (BoM) costs with a unique process for pack assembly and disassembly to aid remanufacture and second-life potential of spent battery packs. The BRAD project builds on the combined expertise of Upgrade Technology Engineering Ltd, Aspire Engineering Ltd, Eco Charger Ltd and Cranfield University.

Ricardo has spent ten years developing magnet free, sustainable, synchronous-reluctance, traction motor technology, which retains the attributes of magnet-rich motors. As part of this, Ricardo is completing the DER "UK-Alumotor 1" supply chain development project, which has delivered manufacturing learning for aluminium windings, low wastage stator manufacture, and composites in rotors with additive manufactured flux guides. This has been delivered in conjunction with our partners: Aspire; Brandauer; GTR; PSI; WMG and the DER Winding Centre of Excellence. This project takes the learning and concepts from the above to significantly increase a light commercial vehicle (LCV) concept motor's Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL). We will deliver a "design for manufacturing" (DFM) project of a pre-production, highly sustainable motor removing 12kg of rare-earth magnets per machine. We will develop the manufacturing processes in the supply chain, a digital-twin of the motor including manufacturing influences, a cradle to grave Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), and a business case with target pricing versus volume data output. The first project phase will develop DFM solutions, procure, assemble and then test first iteration motors, which will be used to validate the digital-twin simulation model. The first iteration motor stator will be manufactured by the DER funded Winding Centre of Excellence at WMG jointly with Aspire using lamination stacks provided by Brandauer. A second, virtual DFM phase will optimise the manufacturing processes through feedback from the LCA, performance and durability test results. This optimisation will be assessed via the digital-twin toolchain, including virtual validation. A parallel task will progress the DFM and manufacturing processes for a higher performance rotor that includes novel composites from the UK-Alumotor 1 project. This will widen the attractiveness of the motor to higher performance Defence and passenger car applications. The route to market will be identified by a business study of potential customers and markets, and a review of the assembly plants required for 5,000 or 100,000 units/year. This will inform investment decisions for Ricardo and partners for low and high-volume manufacturing. Additional commercialisation will come from deploying the learning by Ricardo and partners in client motor design and development projects. This will increase the partners' competitiveness in the UK and deliver further value from the Innovate UK DER funding.

UK-Alumotor, supported by Driving the Electric Revolution (part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund), will develop a dedicated supply chain to manufacture a patented electric machine (e-machine) which will exploit UK-based high-value manufacturing technology. The e-machine will leverage specialist material, transferring technology developed within the aerospace & motorsports sectors, together with commodity materials. The e-machine will make use of aluminium & iron, rather than copper and rare earth metals (used in permanent magnet motors) which suffer price volatility and import tariffs. This provides the UK supply chain with competitive advantage to fulfil the growing market demand for traction e-machines during the next decade and beyond. The UK-Alumotor consortium, led by Ricardo, is a diverse team of partners from across the UK in conjunction with non-grant claiming OEM stakeholders McLaren and JCB. Our manufacturing partners Aspire, Brandauer, GTR and PSI will assess, select and develop low-cost, lean manufacturing processes that can be scaled to deliver the e-machine at appropriate volumes. These scalable processes will ensure quality, minimise material waste together with the lifecycle assessment impact of the e-machine. JCB and McLaren will provide application sector feedback to the supply chain throughout the work, ensuring that the product meets the specific needs of the performance sports car and off-highway markets. By aligning our approach to application requirements, we ensure the final "design for manufacture" product remains suitable for adoption into multiple sectors including aerospace, marine and rail. Our academic partner WMG will support the programme through literature review, technical workshops and dedicated advisory work. They will deploy learning from the programme to improve their e-machine models in support of virtual validation. The lifecycle impact of the product will be considered throughout the supply chain. Using widely available, and recycled, metals within the e-machine will reduce the lifecycle impact of the e-machine compared with permanent magnet-based motors. UK-Alumotor is a transformative programme that will build a UK supply chain to deliver a high performance, e-machine at a reduced cost and volume in order to drive the electric revolution, both within the UK and the export market.

The CICERO (Classic Car ElectRificatiOn) project addresses 2nd life opportunities for EV battery packs that pushes beyond the current state of art. The key objectives are: (i) develop a digital vehicle configurator and digital-twin of a Classic/Heritage vehicle, (ii) create a disassembly process designed and optimised via a digital twin. (iii) address logistics and OEM liability issues, and (iv) design a proof of concept classic vehicle demonstrator.

Across all electric vehicle applications - including fully battery powered electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and fuel cell variants - the battery is critical to overall vehicle cost and performance, especially over the full lifecycle. However, despite Lithium-ion continuing to dominate the EV domain, no single cell chemistry is optimised across all of the battery characteristics targeted by vehicle manufacturers, including: * Energy density * Power and impulse resilience * Operating temperature range * Cycle life * Susceptibility to thermal runaway * Cost Electric vehicle batteries based on single chemistries therefore cannot reconcile the conflicting requirements for size, power and operational temperature versus predictability, lifespan and cost. With safety the underlying priority, the resulting design compromises inevitably impact performance, with increasing reliance on cells with high rare earth content (e.g. Cobalt). This presents significant barriers to OEM electrification programmes and end-user adoption. In response, Upgrade Technology Engineering are developing a novel battery management system with potential to practically integrate multiple cell chemistries within a composite battery module: the Multi-Chemistry Battery (MCB). With each cell chemistry selected to mitigate the others' weaknesses across all key metrics, MCB unlocks a significant UK supply chain opportunity by overcoming challenges of balancing chemistries and power regulation. Now Upgrade Technology Engineering, with Cranfield and ASPIRE Engineering target the hardware and model-driven embedded software developments to realise a full-scale modular prototype, as the basis to prove hardware switching scalability to multiple chemistries and support UK supply chain engagements.

The partners will develop a winding machine for aluminium wires. The winding machine will be developed and provide the first UK supply chain solution for manufacturing aluminium coils. Coil winding is a critical component of eMachine manufacture and is not provided by any UK manufacturer. UK based companies of eMachines have to purchase winding machines from overseas suppliers or have wound coils shipped to them. The partners well placed to provide guidance on the work and how to exploit the results of the project. Two of the partners, Ashwoods and Voltalogic, provide copper coil designs that will be redesigned to use aluminium wire. Hydro will provide coated aluminium wire with the preferred electrical conductivity and mechanical properties. Aspire will build their work on winding machines to provide a volume manufacturing solution. WMG will leverage their development work on volume e-Machine manufacture to guide the partners to the provision of a volume manufacturing solution. The advantages of aluminium coils are lower cost and lower weight compared with copper. The major disadvantage is the higher resistance, which decreases the efficiency of the e-Machine at low speeds. With the drive to higher speed e-Machines this disadvantage is becoming lower. The designs developed by Ashwoods and Voltalogic will target designs optimised for use with aluminium windings. The flexibility of material properties allowed by Hydro material development will provide a wider set of winding solutions. The successful completion of the project will provide a UK supply chain for the manufacture of e-Machine coil winding. Through this, it will enhance the UK's competitiveness to deliver e-Machine manufacturing technology. It will embed the design and manufacturing expertise for coil winding into the UK supply chain. The project will develop the reduction in weight of e-Machines by 15% without compromising performance by developing manufacturing processes for winding coils from alternative material. The project will deliver, for the first time, to the off-highway market a single source drive systems incorporating advanced IPM motor technology, radically lighter BUT equally as efficient as current IPM technology. The consortium partners are Ashwoods Electric Motors, Aspire Engineering, Voltalogic, WMG and Hydro. The technology and manufacturing capability will be developed by Ashwoods, Voltalogic and Aspire. WMG will validate the coil windings whilst Ashwoods will integrate this new technology into their products for benchmark testing. Ashwoods will exploit the outputs of this project through their own existing high-volume OEM relationships by the end of 2020

A collaborative project involving specialist UK-based companies and academia to develop, localise and industrialise the next generation of EV technology for existing and future vehicles produced by London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC). Building on the success of the current ‘eCity’ technology that has already helped to reduce over 30,000 tonnes of CO2, investment in this new EV technology ensures that LEVC will continue to lead the development of innovative green mobility products.

Project DETAIN brings together the expertise of Unipart Logistics, Aspire Engineering, HORIBA MIRA, and Instrumentel, to develop an 'intelligent' high voltage battery storage solution to mitigate the risks associated with thermal runaway. The consortium have an ambition to use intelligent systems to DETect and contAIN thermal runaway: DETAIN. Project DETAIN draws on the varying expertise, responsibilities and growth ambitions of the consortium to review industry-wide requirements and develop an intelligent storage facility to provide the end-to-end Electric Vehicle supply chain with a sustainable alternative to sacrificial storage and the 'let it burn' approach. The Faraday Challenge has set a target to eliminate thermal runaway at pack level by 2035\. Until that is achieved, the batteries that are designed and built will still be susceptible to thermal runaway, particularly when damaged or faulty, and will need to be safely stored. Project DETAIN aligns with the supply chain need to better manage the batteries currently in production and enable the imminent growth predicted. The project also supports the Faraday challenge for recyclability, as safe and effective storage solutions will be key to development of efficient remanufacturing, reuse for End-of-Life and recycling. To detect thermal runaway there will be three areas of focus: 1) BMS thermal runaway detection algorithms for next generation hardware, 2) externally mounted (on battery) thermal runaway detection systems, and 3) distributed sensor networks for battery storage facilities. To contain thermal runaway, Project DETAIN will investigate automation, fire suppression materials, and combinations of the two, to deliver an effective unmanned containment response when thermal runaway has been detected. The project has additional focus on the safety, legislative and regulatory requirements to ensure solutions being developed are approved by relevant Insurance bodies, and the testing requirements to approve the solution. The feasibility study allows the consortium to fully investigate the potential of an intelligent battery storage facility and understand the requirements to deliver a proof of concept. Project DETAIN's objectives are to: * Complete a holistic analysis of the state-of-the-art processes, products and technology to detect and contain thermal runaway, * Predict how an connected, intelligent storage solution could function in line with safety and insurance requirements, * Produce a gap analysis to identify further developments required, * A design and plan for the proof of concept facility, * Specify the testing facilities required to measure the efficacy of the proof of concept.

The main motivation for the BATREV Technology Feasibility Study (TFS) is addressing the business need for remanufacturing warranty-return & damaged/worn/EoL Electric Vehicle Batteries, (EVBs), the variety & quantities of which are increasing exponentially as vehicle manufacturers compete fiercely in the EV market. The main states-of-the art address high-volume/low-variety EVB-remanufacturing markets, i.e. (i) high-cost fixed-automation, and/or (ii) robots with limited intelligence which is insufficient for technical fitness-for-purpose for small-batch production & frequent change-overs. This provides an immediate and growing BATREV business opportunity as current technologies cannot cope with EVB-disassembly's adverse health & safety conditions, varying levels of wear, corrosion and damage, and part identification/location uncertainty created through in-service maintenance/up-grading/component degradation. BATREV-outputs will be at virtual-demonstrator-level, i.e.: (1) TFSPLAN & TFSSIM database tools of RRE simulation assets enabling (i) creation & visualisation of RRE-scenarios, (ii) RRE mechanical-characteristics, (iii) end-effector motions, (iv) scalability and manufacturability data-collection & output to TFS. (2) TFSOPT AI-enabled tool for optimised RRE Planning & QCDE characteristics. The UK economy benefits from BATREV by providing routes to high levels of import substitution by originally-imported engines being remanufactured in the UK and being substituted by UK OEMs for new imported engines. The Technical Feasibility Study of Battery Remanufacturing for Electric Vehicles (BATREV) project will undertake a feasibility study to identify the scalability, manufacturability and capability of using autonomous robots and autonomous operations planning systems to undertake the remanufacturing of EVBs, i.e. battery-to-component disassembly, operations planning of component repair & reconditioning processes and component-to-battery reassembly. Providing a clear understanding of the processes needed to scale-up will be a primary aim of the BATREV project particularly in terms of: (1) De-risking scaling-up of the innovative autonomous Robot Remanufacturing Engineer (RRE) technology and autonomous operations planning methods. (2) making scaling-up faster and less costly, and (3) providing a clear route to scale-up of RRE technology. BATREV TFS will examine RRE scale-up and its effects on UK competitiveness, and numbers and size of EVB remanufacturers. Social benefits arise through improved job security and employment opportunities from increased organisational growth rates through greater robot enabled productivity. Quality of life impacts inside/outside the consortium are derived from competitive advantage improvements. Environmental and economic benefits arise from (1) reuse of battery components where materials are ~65% of costs, (2) reduced waste, landfill, pollution, CO2 emissions, and (3) reduced lead times hence less factory light & heat energy/EVB-unit, and (4) less energy costs through less factory space requirements.

"Project VALUABLE's key objectives are to develop commercially viable metrology and test processes as well as new supply chain concepts for recycling, reuse and remanufacturing of automotive lithium-ion batteries to create a complete End-of-Life (EoL) supply chain network within the UK. The consortium's vision is to 1) increase the value-add of the battery supply chain in the UK, 2) decrease the environmental impact, and 3) optimise future battery design for EoL. By bringing together many disparate parts of many sectors, the project will provide an efficient and effective route to providing second life battery applications, whilst reducing the packs / cells being fed into the waste streams. The project will investigate key areas that are providing difficulties in dealing with automotive batteries at their EoL: 1) the lack of reliable and cost-effective test methods, 2) the lack of remanufacturing/recycling and reuse processes, 3) the lack of effective value chains, and 4) lack of design considerations for EoL in battery design. To implement efficient processes, the project will investigate and develop advanced 'machine vision' capabilities, to determine which packs have second life potential and at what level and which are for recycling. This development of advanced testing capability in the EoL processing line, will enable the consortium to explore significant value chain applications for end-of-life batteries, ranging from remanufacturing to go back into the same vehicle model, to use in lower demand mobility applications, through to use as energy storage mediums for the energy market. The test results will also aid future first life battery pack design, providing OEMs and battery producers with routes to both realise additional value from future applications for used batteries and to move towards 95% recyclability. In conjunction with the development of new designs and processes, the project team will also explore the growing legal and regulatory issues surrounding the battery producer responsibility / waste classifications in the UK and Europe. In addition, not only will the battery cells be assessed, but the charge controllers, outer jackets, and other components. Reuse of these products contributes to the recycling targets, but also supports improved material recovery routes through better material separation. The project brings together partners across the supply chain, developing new EoL testing techniques, and in creating a UK-based EoL supply chain. The project is not only supported by the supply chain but also an industry-wide OEM support represented in a guiding advisory group."

Led by Williams Advanced Engineering, a consortium including Aston Martin Lagonda, Unipart Powertrain Applications, Warwick Manufacturing Group, National Composites Centre, Coventry University, Aspire Engineering and Productiv, will address the need for high performance electric vehicle (EV) batteries by: 1) realising a novel flexible battery technology with unrivalled module/system performance; and 2) establishing a UK pilot facility for high performance batteries. The H1PERBAT project takes an integrated full life cycle approach to remove constraints on capacity, energy density and thermal management of EV batteries at module and system level to realise a step change in performance for demanding EV applications. The test/optimisation of durability, integrity and safety of technology at cell, module and system level for validated vehicle integration is targeted. The novel pilot facility will realise unique UK capability in module/system-level R&D and scalability to medium production volumes to flexibly target UK/global EV OEMs.

Disruptive Integrated Electric Transmissions for Industrial Vehicles (DIET) will develop integrated electrified transmissions. The integrated electric transmissions consist of a combined motor and inverter integrated into one of three separate drive units: a hydraulic pump, a planetary gearbox or an axle. Generating a range of integrated e-pumps, e-axles and e-gearboxes. The project will deliver for the first time to the off highway market single source drive systems incorporating advanced IPM motor technology, that are radically smaller, lighter and more efficient than incumbent technology. The consortium is made up of Ashwoods Electric Motors, Curtis Instruments, Oerlikon Graziano, Aspire Engineering, Nexen Lift Trucks, The University of Bath and UniCarriers. The technology and production capability will be developed by Ashwoods, Curtis, Graziano and Aspire. Bath will validate the systems and Nexen and UniCarriers will integrate the technologies into their vehicles for real world validation. The Consortium will to exploit the outputs of this project through their own existing high volume OEM relationships or on their own vehicles by the end of 2019.