Battery cabinet production quality issues

Given the thin profit margins (often 2–3%) 86 with which battery factories operate, quality concerns are often in tension with these manufacturing performance indicators. For instance, the decision of what to do with a batch of cells with marginal failures might be heavily debated between production and quality teams.

The rise in battery production faces challenges from manufacturing complexity and sensitivity, causing safety and reliability issues. This Perspective discusses the challenges and opportunities for high-quality battery production at scale.

Fig. 1: Three challenges related to poor battery quality. a Safety events, in which a single battery defect can cause harm to humans or the environment. b Pack/device reliability, in which a single cell can cause an entire pack or device to fail.

In summary, both senses of battery quality (defectiveness and conformance) are critical determinants of battery failure and thus the financial success of cell and EV production endeavors. We revisit battery quality in the “Managing battery quality in production” section.

Poor battery quality can lead to major safety and reliability issues in the field in applications including consumer electronics [1, 2], electric vehicles [3, 4], aviation, and more. However, detecting latent cell defects —which are responsible for these battery quality issues—during production is notoriously challenging.

Of course, these inspection techniques add cost, which reduces the already-thin profit margins of battery manufacturing.