The AA Battery of the Future: Leading the Way for Standardization

This article was originally published in Thinkers & Makers, a magazine from Akkodis featuring the smartest minds and innovative projects that are driving the future of technology and engineering.

A seemingly unremarkable grey box lies at the heart of a new mobility ecosystem developed by a cross-disciplinary team of Akkodis engineers. It may not look spectacular, but it can power almost anything electrical – providing a potential solution to a key challenge as the electrification of mobility, industry, and broader society gathers momentum.

Developing battery systems that are both powerful and adaptable is challenging. The Akkodis Smart Ecosystem team advocates for a holistic approach, developing universal storage solutions that serve the entire e-mobility spectrum and can also transition other sectors from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

An Unremarkable Grey Box at the Heart of E-Mobility

This is where the unremarkable grey box comes in. It is the keystone of an end-to-end solution designed not only to power a range of electric vehicles but also to go beyond the transport sector for use in other battery-powered applications.

In its role as the Swiss Army knife of batteries, the grey box is uniform on the outside but flexible on the inside. Size and interface are standardized, yet different battery chemistries and cell types can be used inside the module. This allows for various configurations, such as a high-power output or a high number of charging cycles. 

“Our idea is to have a battery system usable in the automotive field and combine it with a broad range of other use cases,” says Nicolas Billebault, Department Director at Akkodis E-Mobility & Energy. “To make that work you need standardization. In the past, you had the AA battery as a standard form factor you could use in every possible electronic device. This is what the AA battery of the future could look like. You can use it in your car, your e-scooter, and your cargo bike. And you can use it to store the energy produced by the solar installation on your house.”

Smart Battery Concept Steals the Show

Akkodis presented the Smart Battery concept at the IAA International Motor Show Germany in Munich in September, including a small electric car known as the Akkodis Urban Lifestyle Vehicle (ULV).

“The ULV is a good example of how the battery concept works,” says Frank Huff, Vice President of Akkodis Design & Concept. “People driving in the city don’t use much range during the week, commuting from home to work. It doesn’t make sense to carry a large and heavy battery around in your car but at the weekend you may need full battery capacity for longer trips. In our ULV, you have a reduced battery as a fixed part of the car, and the possibility of adding extra battery modules for weekends and holidays.”

Toward Sustainable Flexibility with Fewer Batteries

It’s all about having the right battery capacity at the right time in the right place. During the week extra car batteries could be used to store energy coming from rooftop solar panels. Making batteries flexible means both optimizing their usage and reducing the number of batteries needed, with a significant sustainability benefit as fewer resources are used.

Billebault and Huff freely acknowledge that their idea is not new. At least not within the automotive sector, where interchangeable batteries for the likes of e-scooters are quite common in Asia. However, the idea of utilizing the same battery across different forms of transportation, and going beyond automotive, attracted plenty of attention at the Munich show.

“We had a lot of interesting discussions with people from many different sectors, who came to us with use cases we hadn’t even thought of such as motorhomes,” Huff says. “The battery in your motorhome stands unused maybe 90% of the time. Why not use it elsewhere?”

Creating a Technological Universe Around the Smart Battery

But that level of versatility needs more than “just” the AA battery of the future – the battery needs to be surrounded by a whole universe of technology.

The Akkodis team has built on years of experience with battery technology, charging stations, and control software to create that ecosystem. Swapping stations are an important part of the Smart Battery infrastructure, together with an e-scooter developed by Akkodis partner Trinity Electric Vehicles and a photovoltaic system developed in cooperation with photovoltaic expert Qcells.

On the software side, the battery management system is hosted in the cloud with AI-supported battery state-of-health capability, determining when the battery should be changed and leading the user to a fully charged battery at the nearest charging station. Akkodis also uses digital ledger technologies to ensure trusted traceability of the exchangeable battery modules, which can be completely recycled.

Overcoming the Hurdles to a Universal Battery Ecosystem

So why not get to work right away to create such a battery ecosystem?

There are challenges to overcome before large-scale adoption. Automotive manufacturers may like the concept but for now, the high-voltage battery is the most strategic component of their vehicles and they invest heavily in optimizing battery power, range, lifetime, and management. For that reason, they may not be interested in a standardized solution - for now.  

But there’s nothing to stop players from different sectors – energy providers, governments, battery manufacturers – joining forces to promote such an ecosystem.

Akkodis Spearheading the Charge Towards Interconnected Battery Technology

As for Akkodis, it was all about demonstrating the concept and highlighting the in-house capabilities available to make it a reality, says Billebault.

“We’ve had a super strong collaboration between the different technical departments in Akkodis. So many people have been working – and are still working – on this concept. In my opinion, it’s a good example of how we can work together and how big our portfolio is in this area.”

The teams have covered all the technical aspects such as different chemistries, energy density, design of mechanical and electrical interfaces, thermic software, battery management, and more.

“On all these topics we have the technical depth to be able to build everything and make it work,” Huff says. “Right now, we’re working on building fully functional prototypes of every part of the Smart Battery ecosystem, to demonstrate even more precisely and convincingly what the battery infrastructure of the future could look like. It’s only a grey box but with so much potential!”