Few markets are moving as rapidly as China’s automotive sector. So the new model is rolling out in just 18 months, putting a lot of pressure on the Legacy Western automakers, which need more than four years to go from the concept to the sales floor.
“In China, there are increasingly shorter development cycles, driving a huge focus on cost and time,” Ian Campbell, co-founder and CEO of Breathe Battery Technologies, told TechCrunch. “In both regions, the East – China and Asia, and the West.”
Much of its focus is on batteries, a component that can be sold or destroyed in electric vehicles. Automakers are forced to predict where the market will be in a few years, but given how quickly EV landscapes are evolving, these predictions don’t necessarily occur.
Modifying physical components can be expensive and unpredictable. That’s why Campbell startups are trying to make their batteries more flexible via software.
Breathe has developed a suite of tools for Campbell to help automakers and others make the most of their batteries. The startup recently raised a $21 million Series B led by Kinnevik Online AB. Low Carbon Capital and Volvo Cartech Fund participated.
The new funding will help Breathe continue to drive its software early in the battery development process. The company currently has four products: design, model, map, and fees.
Charging is Breathe’s first product, optimizing charging strategies to replenish or increase battery life.
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Battery manufacturing is well controlled, but there are no two cells that are 100% identical to the roll of the line. As a result, some people generate more heat during fast charging, while others can withstand more charging and ejection cycles than their peers.
It was first adopted by Chinese mobile phone manufacturer Oppo, and the software reduced charging time by 27%. On the car side, Volvo will help install Breathe code on future ES90 sedans and charge 10% to 80% in 20 minutes. Essentially, Breathe software allows you to take full advantage of each cell, taking into account individual quirks.
Other products from startups can help automakers and electronics companies design and predict how they will function in a few years after the battery, allowing them to decide where to invest their development resources. For example, if a new chemical is low cost and appears to have a longer life expectancy, the designer may decide to charge it a little faster at the expense of a portion of its lifespan.
“They want to understand what happens when they trade off the rooms they have and the entire battery system development program,” Campbell said.
To that end, Breathe can build a lab in London and run a variety of tests on batteries that customers are interested in using. In just four weeks, it is sufficient to ship to customers a model (called a breathing model) that can simulate future performance possibilities.
The cell then stays in the lab to provide more data, allowing breath to eventually ship its map product to customers. The design product will round out the suite when it is released in the coming months and will provide customers with a set of software tools.
The goal is to reduce the amount of “brute force lab tests” needed to bring batteries to the market, Campbell said. He has worked closely with companies such as Apple and Nvidia to implement processor designs in silicon in collaboration with Foundries such as TSMC, and is similar to Breathe’s software tools used in the Semiconductor industry.
“We want to try it out for batteries that we’ve seen Cadence and Synopsis simulation software do effectively in semiconductor designs,” he said.