Interview: Pankaj Sharma
Co-Founder and Director at Log9 Materials
Log9’s Battery Intelligence: Leveraging AI for Health Monitoring and Predictive Maintenance
November 05, 2024. By Abha Rustagi
Que: Log9 has been disrupting the EV battery space for nearly a decade. What were the key milestones in taking your technology from concept to commercialization?
Ans: During early years at Log9 the emphasis was initially on developing competency in material science. As Log9 developed competency in Fuel cells and Ultra capacitors, it ventured deep into building its capability and knowhow in lithium ion cells and battery packs. The idea was to develop full understanding around lithium ion chemistry, understanding the charge discharge profile of the Li-ion cells and developing deeper insights in degradation mechanisms of Li-ion cells. This was followed by developing battery pack architecture for fast charging, temperature tolerance and safety feature as required by Indian OEM’s. Log9 also invested heavily in developing its own BMS architecture for better control on the battery architecture and performance. Over the years, Log9 has extended its business beyond hardware and setup a fully integrated EV asset management for ensuring that B2B customers are able to get access to business EV’s (2W and 3W) with minimum down time, easy financing and pan India service.
Que: With AI becoming critical for optimizing battery performance, what are the skill sets that Log9 is seeking in its workforce to stay ahead in this domain?
Ans: AI is at the heart of selecting the right Lithium-ion cell to helping develop the right embedded engineering design, to capturing and processing hardware and software data of a battery pack. One of the corner stone where AI is being explored is in predicting the State of Health (SoH) of the battery as it gets used in an EV. At Log9, our team of scientists and engineers comes from a diverse back ground to full fill such dynamic demands. Our hiring strategy focuses on building a diverse setup of people for a given task. For example, in our Cell R&D team we have team members with back ground in material science, data analytics, coating and flow process engineering. While at the same time in our BMS team we have mathematicians, Algorithm developers, Embedded engineers. Hence with the dynamic opportunity presented by AI in battery technology. We will see more and more interdisciplinary team members join and scale our human capital at Log9.
Que: How does Log9 integrate AI-driven analytics in its EV asset management platform, Amphion, to enhance fleet optimization and minimize downtime?
Ans: •By continuous monitoring of battery utilization and charge – discharge profile of the battery inside an EV. AI is able to identify the root cause of an error and help technicians arrive at an optimal repair plan to fix problems as they appear in EV’s.
•In commercial segment, AI has enabled Log9 to create a driver score based on their driving pattern, thereby incentivizing drivers to drive better which leads – less damage to vehicle, reduce accidents thus lead to increased road safety and even unlock easy financing for good drivers.
•Predictive maintenance – At Log9, AI is even going to a level where it is able to pre-emptively find if something can go wrong with the vehicle by looking at the discharge profile, cell voltage and energy consumption patterns. Thereby preventing costly repairs and increasing the life of EV.
•Battery Health – Log9 Mobility parent group being the manufacturer of battery, it allows it to link manufacturing data of cell with the current usage, thereby allowing AI to manage energy distribution in packs, create certainty in range/battery output and reduce battery degradation.
•Charging Infra – By analyzing vehicle routes and run timing, AI is able to help people find the charging infra at appropriate time thereby limiting the cases of deep discharge.
•Improving customer experience – Using the battery health and customer driving pattern AI is able to help customer drive maximum output by providing them optimized routes.
Que: Log9 is working towards sustainable battery disposal with Lohum. How does this partnership contribute to creating a circular economy for EV batteries?
Ans: The disposal of batteries at the end of their useful life is at the heart of Log9-Lohum Collaboration. Lohum has been working and developing optimal Li-ion battery recycling process and Log9 has been working closely with Lohum for developing a responsible way of recycling its batteries at the end of its life. Lohum recycling process would allow recovery of metals such as titanate, lithium and other important raw materials from Log9 batteries which can eventually find its way back into cell manufacturing process. There by providing a circular path for some of the raw materials used in Log9 batteries.
Que: In your collaboration with Musashi Seimitsu Industry, how do you envision the integration of battery technology with e-Axle systems transforming the electric two-wheeler and three-wheeler markets?
Ans: Powertrain (or eAxle in Musashi's case) and Battery form the core/integral part of an EV, we can even call them the Heart and Brain of the EV respectively! As such, these sub systems need to function in sync especially to maximize/optimize the vehicle performance across key vehicle parameters namely Top Speed, Acceleration, Range and Gradeability. For this the key requirement is to design, develop and integrate the e-Axle and battery for performance optimization. Via this collaboration, Log9-Musashi is aiming to bring a combined powertrain solution for OEMs spaning the 2W and 3E WV market segment.
Its imperative to say, the optimization exercise also leads to benefits on the Product's QCD (Quality, Cost and Delivery) thereby helping EV OEMs to GTM quickly and setup scale plans.
Que: What are your future targets for CO2 reduction, and how do you plan to scale your battery technologies to support global sustainability goals?
Ans: Today we have removed over 2600 times of Co2 by deploying over 6500 batteries in the market with over 20. Million kms run on our batteries. At this rate of Growth, we expect to double up our CO2 reduction numbers within next 12- 18 months.
please contact: contact@energetica-india.net.