"We Enable OEMs to Make More Competitive and Safer Vehicles" - Elysia's Technical Lead, Tim Engstrom

Elysia is the end-result of over a decade spent developing batteries for everything from Formula E electric racing cars to 250 tonne mining trucks and road cars to electric scooters. The battery intelligence software unit has been launched by WAE Technologies (WAE), a UK technology and engineering services business, 

"We have gained an unprecedented understanding of how batteries behave both in normal conditions, as well as under the extreme performance demands of the racetrack or the 45-degree heat of Australian iron ore mines," Elysia's Technical Lead, Tim Engstrom, tells Auto Futures.

Its software offers access to battery insights, and the ability to manage, optimise and enhance performance across the battery’s entire lifecycle.

"Elysia is built upon a unique combination of AI and data science, fused with electrochemical modelling expertise, whilst being grounded in unrivalled real-world battery engineering experience. We have used this knowledge to create software that can get the best out of batteries, while protecting their longevity and identifying potential faults and failures before they become apparent," says Engstrom.

"We are now able to offer these products to OEMs, fleets and finance companies to better understand, utilise and protect what is often the most expensive system in a vehicle or product," he adds.

It has two software offerings, one that sits on the hardware in the car, which is known as 'Embedded', and 'Elysia Cloud Platform', which runs wholly in the cloud and requires no on-vehicle changes.

"Elysia Embedded is a suite of state-of-the-art battery management algorithms, which run locally on the Battery Management System (BMS). Its BMS algorithms help OEMs to increase vehicle range, enable faster charging, and maximise battery power, enabling them to stay ahead of the competition delivering the best possible performance to customers, without compromising safety or battery life."

"In applications we have run to date, this has shown the ability to bring up to a 30% increase in battery life and 10% potential increase in battery range, whilst also enabling dramatically reduced fast charge times and higher peak power output when compared to traditional battery management algorithms."

Elysia Cloud Platform uses proprietary digital twin technology.

"It helps OEMs, fleet owners and battery asset financiers turn data into actionable insights, designed to enable these customers to forecast and extend battery life, enhance safety, and protect warranty and residual values. By providing a complete picture of the battery’s state of health, it brings much-needed transparency, while enabling accurate verification of degradation and in-life fault-finding, offering the potential to revolutionise the second-life battery market," explains Engstrom.

Better Charging Performances

Elysia's solutions can help extend the life of batteries by up to 30%, avoiding premature wear and replacement of the most carbon-intensive (and expensive) part of the vehicle, says Engstrom.

"Our technology also allows for a better understanding of the true state of health and life of a battery, giving greater confidence to financiers and warranty providers, increasing confidence in investing in battery electric vehicles, opening up ownership to more people," her adds.

Elysia Embedded can help OEMs make more competitive and safer vehicles, unlocking better charging performance, and longer ranges from the same cell.

"OEMs work around a set of parameters provided by the cell manufacturers and captured during testing, around which they set limits and determine how ‘states’ of the battery are estimated, such as the battery’s State of Charge (SoC). These traditional BMS algorithms are often very unoptimised, meaning a lot of potential performance may be left on the table, or alternatively risks excessive damage to the cells. This is further exacerbated by the fact these algorithms struggle to adapt as the battery ages, risking unreliable range estimates, or potentially damaging usage of the battery," he says.

"The kind of improvements we are talking about would normally require significant hardware investment to achieve, or radical new cell chemistries, but we can give them that through software alonem." 

Elysia's parent company, WAE Technologies, was acquired by Australia's Fortescue in March, 2022. Elysia’s Embedded algorithms and Cloud Platform are powering the next generation of electrified mining trucks for Fortescue. 

"This is a great testing ground for our work as it is probably the most extreme duty cycle of any vehicle outside of motorsport. These trucks weigh 250 tonnes, carry enormous loads of iron ore and operate in temperatures over 45 degrees in the North West of Australia. We are helping to manage these enormous batteries which are more than 20 times the size of an average electric car battery and software is a critical part of that work to protect and monitor the battery," says Engstrom.

The Increasing Importance of Battery Lifetime

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have recentlly been grabbing the headlines. The automotive sector is no exception.

"AI has become commonplace in fields such as materials discovery and characterisation, optimisation of experimental design and manufacturing, as well as state of charge (SOC) and state of health (SOH) estimation. However, we strongly feel that while it has its place, there are limits to AI and machine learning, and without a good knowledge of the first principles, a fully ‘black box’ AI approach can lead to false answers and an inability to separate coincidence from causation," says Engstrom.

Finally, we asked him what urban mobility and transportation will look like by 2030.

"We don’t feel like this is a singular picture, with the answer varying by continent, by country and by region within that country. What is clear is that whatever form of transport is dominant in the area you are living and or working in, it will be increasingly utilising electricity, likely coming from a battery. Everything from scooters to trains are increasingly using batteries and as the capabilities of them improve, more and more of the mobility spectrum can be covered by some form of BEV," Engstrom predicts.

"Undoubtedly shared ownership and rental will play an important role in mobility, placing even more importance on battery lifetime and uptime, but that picture will look very different depending on where you are. Whatever vehicles those batteries are in and however they are owned, we are ready to optimise the operation, ownership and lifetime value of them using Elysia software," he concludes.