Northvolt subsidiary Cuberg reveals development programme for aviation battery systems

North­volt sub­sidiary Cuberg has unveiled a new pro­gram ded­i­cat­ed to devel­op­ing high-per­for­mance bat­tery sys­tems that will enable safe, sus­tain­able elec­tric flight based on its inno­v­a­tive lithi­um met­al bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy.

Since pub­lish­ing exter­nal­ly val­i­dat­ed per­for­mance data on its lithi­um met­al cell tech­nol­o­gy in July 2022, Cuberg has made sig­nif­i­cant advances toward a ful­ly inte­grat­ed bat­tery sys­tem.

First­ly, Cuberg has devel­oped a 20 Ah com­mer­cial-for­mat lithi­um met­al pouch cell with spe­cif­ic ener­gy of 405 Wh/kg. Sec­ond­ly, Cuberg has pro­duced an avi­a­tion mod­ule, based around its 20 Ah lithi­um met­al cells, with spe­cif­ic ener­gy of 280 Wh/kg and ener­gy den­si­ty of 320 Wh/L. Third­ly, the Cuberg lithi­um met­al mod­ule plat­form has achieved pas­sive prop­a­ga­tion resis­tance dur­ing a ther­mal run­away ver­i­fi­ca­tion test cam­paign.

Peter Carls­son, CEO and co-founder of North­volt, com­ment­ed: “With our avi­a­tion sys­tems pro­gram, we will lever­age Cuberg’s next-gen­er­a­tion lithi­um met­al cell tech­nol­o­gy togeth­er with our bat­tery man­u­fac­tur­ing expe­ri­ence to bring end-to-end ener­gy solu­tions to the skies.”

Cuberg tech­nol­o­gy uses a lithi­um met­al anode and pro­pri­etary liq­uid elec­trolyte to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly solve the inter­lock­ing chal­lenges of bat­tery per­for­mance and man­u­fac­tura­bil­i­ty.

While bat­tery tech­nolo­gies such as lithi­um-ion can be too heavy for use in air­craft, Cuberg bat­tery cells are light­weight and high-per­for­mance. The tech­nol­o­gy is also com­pat­i­ble with indus­try stan­dard man­u­fac­tur­ing meth­ods, enabling scal­a­bil­i­ty, reli­a­bil­i­ty and trace­abil­i­ty.

Richard Wang, Cuberg CEO and founder, added: “Air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers are held back by the weight and imma­tu­ri­ty of avi­a­tion-cer­ti­fi­able lithi­um-ion bat­tery sys­tems. With this new pro­gram, we will build cer­ti­fi­able bat­tery sys­tems and deliv­er an end-to-end solu­tion backed by one of the world’s pre­em­i­nent bat­tery man­u­fac­tur­ers.”

North­volt has grown to over 4,500 peo­ple from over 110 coun­tries, hav­ing to date secured more than $55 bil­lion worth of con­tracts from key cus­tomers, includ­ing BMW, Flu­ence, Sca­nia, Volk­swa­gen, Vol­vo Cars and Polestar.

Cuberg was found­ed in 2015 in order to com­mer­cialise next-gen­er­a­tion lithi­um met­al cell tech­nol­o­gy and was acquired by North­volt in 2021. Cuberg is locat­ed in San Lean­dro, Cal­i­for­nia, US.