Manufacturing Magazine December 2022 | Page 51

own company , with a manufacturing strategy to build battery packs in the UK for any car company or any other niche vehicle battery pack application .
“ If you have a £ 20mn vehicle development budget and it currently costs £ 50mn to develop a battery pack , that means you can ' t electrify ,” explains Eaton . “ There ' s just no route in . You also can ' t go to the big cell OEMs because their minimum order quantity is US $ 1bn . That ' s really where we ' re targeting , because there aren ' t really any great solutions if you ' re a niche vehicle manufacturer trying to electrify . There are only compromises .”
A weakness in the battery pack supply chain The companies that support certain pockets of society are the niche vehicle manufacturers – they ' re the people who make trucks , buses , delivery vans and those are the vehicles that are made in low quantities , yet they need to be electrified , too . All these things need to be served , whether it ' s the biggest car company on the market or the 100th niche vehicle manufacturer in the UK , so IONETIC will have its first production line for prototypes in 2023 . “ We ' ll go into full scale production , scaling up over the next three-four years . By 2027 , we should have the capability
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