Cohort 9 (2023): Cell Quality, Second-Life Reuse and BESS in ASEAN

Our Cohort 9 battery course ran through December 2023, and the group that came together kept circling three practical questions: how do you finance a supply chain that has to grow faster than any before it, how do you make cells that meet quality and safety targets at volume, and what happens to those cells once their first life ends. Across ten lectures, a long roster of office hours and a set of case studies, the sessions moved from investment strategy to the factory floor to the recycling plant. This recap pulls together the themes that defined the cohort.

Financing and building the supply chain

The cohort opened on the money question. A lecture on scaling investment in battery supply chains set the frame, and the group returned repeatedly to the gap between announced capacity and the capital, materials and skilled operators needed to deliver it. That thread ran straight into strategy sessions on the challenges facing the industry and how companies were positioning for the years ahead, alongside office hours on global market expansion for battery firms.

Geography made the abstract concrete. Case work on building a resilient supply chain, on the "battery foundry" concept as a shared route to capacity, and on investing in EV charging infrastructure in India gave the group real markets to reason about. The recurring lesson was that a battery business is only as strong as its weakest upstream link, and that resilience has to be designed in rather than bolted on later.

Cells, quality and the factory floor

Manufacturing was unusually prominent this cohort. Sessions on the latest advances in battery cell quality and on an overview of battery and BMS systems gave everyone a shared vocabulary, and the office hours went deeper: novel manufacturing technologies in cell production, testing of cells and modules, process improvements on the line, and the practical experience of setting up cell manufacturing from scratch. A talk on how manufacturing digital twins reduce scrap and improve performance drew a lot of interest, because scrap rate is where thin margins are won or lost.

Two threads gave the quality discussion real depth. Postmortem analysis of lithium-ion cells and battery electrochemical modelling showed how failures get traced back to root cause, while sessions on thermal management and temperature control connected that diagnostic work to safety in the field. Extreme fast charging came up as a design target that stresses every one of these disciplines at once. Case studies on process improvement in cell manufacturing tied the theory back to yield.

End of life, second life and new chemistries

The circular economy ran through the cohort as strongly as manufacturing did. A lecture on recycling as a key enabler for sustainable electric mobility set the tone, and office hours widened it: recycling of solid-state batteries, second-life supply chain management for EV packs, and the harder question of what it really takes to think circular in a battery business. Case work on the prospects and challenges of second-life batteries and on a sustainable LFP recycling process kept the discussion grounded in economics rather than aspiration.

Alongside recycling, the cohort looked outward at where storage was going. BESS for renewable energy storage featured in both lectures and cases, with case studies on grid storage in ASEAN and in smart cities. Applications kept the group honest about diversity of demand: electrification in leisure boats, cells for electric aviation, and lithium-ion as the backbone of renewable energy goals in the telecom industry. Zinc-ion batteries appeared as a scaling story for energy storage and high-power applications, a reminder that lithium is not the only chemistry earning attention. EU battery regulation and its focus on carbon footprint framed much of this, connecting product decisions back to compliance.

Key Takeaways

• Cohort 9 treated supply chain investment as the industry's central bottleneck, examining resilient sourcing, the battery foundry concept and charging infrastructure in markets such as India.
• Cell quality was a headline theme, from BMS fundamentals to postmortem analysis, electrochemical modelling and digital twins that cut scrap on the line.
• Manufacturing sessions emphasised the practical work of setting up production, improving process yield and testing cells and modules at volume.
• Recycling and second-life ran throughout, including recycling of solid-state batteries, second-life supply chain management and a sustainable LFP recycling process.
• BESS anchored the storage discussion, with case studies on grid storage across ASEAN and in smart-city settings.
• Applications ranged widely: leisure boats, electric aviation, telecom power and zinc-ion batteries for high-power use, showing how far battery demand now reaches.
• EU battery regulation and its carbon-footprint requirements connected nearly every theme back to policy and compliance.