SUPPLY CHAIN
Niche automotive companies are currently not well served by the current market options for battery packs . What ’ s more , the options that do exist right now are either very expensive , the minimum order quantities are set too high or the engineering optimisation isn ' t good enough . This leaves specialised automotive companies with a bad product or a product that has no business case .
This year , James Eaton , became the CEO and Co-Founder of IONETIC , a battery pack technology company focusing on both design and manufacturing of battery packs , specifically for niche automotive companies .
“ We always want to serve niche vehicle players , we never want to leave those people behind ”
JAMES EATON CEO AND CO-FOUNDER , IONETIC
The business has developed a bespoke battery pack design platform , which can automatically generate designs according to multiple fully adjustable parameters in a matter of days – helping automotive manufacturers strike an efficient balance between cost and customisation . “ We looked holistically at the whole problem to work out : how do we actually provide good engineering solutions that are cost effective ?”
Eaton studied Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London , a subject with a high dropout rate .
“ I did four years there and I got my Master ’ s ,” he explains . “ My third and fourth year projects were both on battery packs . One was on the design and manufacture of racing specification battery packs and then my dissertation was modelling and simulation of racing specification battery packs .”
He was immediately hired by Imperial as a researcher and spent more than a year working with industry partners on automotive battery pack analysis , data and design . Then , after four years of studying battery packs , Eaton set out to build his
50 December 2022