Ex-Ather Energy Executives Start Fast Charging Battery Startup

It is no secret that Ather is one of the pioneers of EV and electrification in India. Now a band of its former executives has formed a company called Exponent Energy which has created technology that can charge a commercial EV battery from zero to 100 percent in just 15 minutes and in some cases in just 5 minutes. In a way, this isn't too dissimilar from refuelling a petrol vehicle. 

The co-founder of Exponent Energy, Arun Vinayak who was the chief product officer of Ather and in an interview with TechCircle, revealed the technology doesn't require special battery chemistry and is compatible with most regular Lithium-Ion batteries. It reveals that it will be working with both EV makers and charging point operators all over India. 

Exponent Energy also features Sanjay Byalal Jagannath as the other co-founder who was the brains behind Ather's hardware strategy sourcing and cell strategy lead. 

"It's fair to say that EVs are better vehicles, but they've broadly remained shackled because of the energy problem," says Vinayak. 

"On the one side, you have charge point operators buying charging stations and putting it up on grids, while on the other you have OEMs who are focusing on building batteries and vehicles along with that. This is why vehicles drive better and you have people setting up charging stations, but they don't seem to work together. Which is why you see vehicles that take 8 hours (or more) to charge up, and batteries that last only 1000 cycles," he explains.

Ather energy has been one of the pioneers of the EV revolution in India and its former executives have founded Exponent Energy 

Exponent Energy has developed a technique with a combination of hardware and software which it calls a flexible energy stack that has been designed to supercharge charging speeds. It has developed its own in-house battery management system which is 10 times more accurate than anything on the market. Exponent claims almost 50 per cent of its technology is software that flows from the grid and then the battery. 

"For us, a battery involves buying cells that are commercially available, slapping on our BMS, having the right thermal management for the vehicle, which lets us rapid-charge commercially available cells," Vinayak explains. He also adds that its batteries will have a 3000 charge cycle warranty, but this will be meant for batteries that are charged using its own technology. 

Vinayak was the chief product officer at Ather Energy
Photo Credit: Image source: Twitter

Exponent Energy has tested batteries for 800 cycles followed by a one-hour discharge which recorded less than 3,5 per cent degradation in battery capacity. The industry standard is that there is more than 20 percent degradation after 1000 charge cycles. 

"Fundamentally, rapid charging is not new. It has been around since 2008. But you had to use cell chemistries like Lithium Titanate Oxide (LTOs) batteries, which are three times heavier and five times more expensive, etc. Which makes it infeasible from a commercialization point of view," Vinayak points out. 

"We don't think rapid charging is new, but the fact that people approach it only from a cell chemistry point of view limits how efficiently we can solve this problem," he adds in his interview with TechCircle.