Cohort 6 (2022): Supply Chains, US and EU Policy, and Sodium-Ion

Cohort 6 closed out 2022, and the battery supply chain sat at the centre of nearly everything it touched. The timing mattered. This was the winter when policy in the United States and Europe was reshaping where cells would be built and where materials would come from, and our participants arrived hungry to understand what that meant for their own plans. Across the lectures, office hours and case studies, the sessions kept returning to one question: who owns each link of the chain, and how do the rest of us respond.

Following the value chain from mine to cell

The cohort's spine was the lithium-ion EV battery market and its supply chain, and it was reinforced from every angle. A participant talk that toured which countries own the battery value chain, and why, gave participants a geographic map of leverage: where lithium and cobalt are mined, where they are refined, where cells are made, and how concentrated each step really is. Talks on trading cobalt and lithium brought the commodity reality into focus, while a session on estimating feedstock requirements for a vertically integrated NMC811 cell facility turned that abstraction into hard tonnage. The message was consistent: understanding the battery supply chain means understanding both the materials and the geopolitics wrapped around them.

Policy was inseparable from the chain this cohort. A lecture on US battery programs, policies and funding opportunities landed right as new incentives were reshaping investment decisions, and a session on tracking the disruptive battery industry and its opportunities in the EU offered the European counterpart. A pointed office-hour talk framed the strategic question directly, chasing China, and examined the chances and opportunities for North America and Europe to build competitive positions. These sessions treated policy not as background noise but as one of the strongest forces acting on the chain.

Building better cells and systems

The engineering thread ran just as deep. A lecture on lithium-ion cell, module and pack design for integration grounded participants in how cells actually get assembled into usable systems, complemented by participant talks on pack production at scale, the challenges of large-scale manufacturing, and considerations for vehicle integration. A session on using advanced techniques to investigate batteries during cycling brought the diagnostic side to life, showing how researchers watch cells age and fail in real time.

Chemistry moved forward too. A dedicated lecture on sodium-ion battery cells reflected how seriously the sector had begun to take the technology by late 2022, particularly as a way to reduce dependence on the most contested parts of the supply chain. Talks on increasing battery sustainability on the material side, on free-standing electrode processes, and on the striking idea of generating graphite anodes electrochemically from thin air, all pointed toward a sector trying to redesign its materials rather than just source them differently.

Storage, safety and the grid

Stationary storage earned major attention, fitting for a cohort thinking about net zero. A lecture on battery energy storage systems and net-zero electricity set the frame, and participant talks pushed into specifics: the role of BESS in addressing inertia loss on the transmission network, energy storage as a piece of the climate puzzle, and power storage with batteries in microgrids as a full case study. Safety came with it, through talks on explosion protection solutions for battery energy storage systems, a reminder that as systems scale, so do the consequences of getting thermal management wrong.

The cohort also kept one eye on the digital and operational layer. Talks on the pilot plant moving from real to digital space, on intelligent transport systems in battery manufacturing, and on the role of simultaneous engineering in production automation showed a sector industrialising in earnest. Even the consumer edge appeared, through work on state-of-health-aware smartphone charging and passivation considerations for IoT devices, proving that the same battery science stretches from grid-scale down to a phone in a pocket.

Circularity and the case studies that closed the loop

Recycling gave the cohort its natural bookend. A lecture on battery recycling and the recovery of critical energy materials connected directly back to the supply chain thread: recovered lithium, nickel and cobalt are, in effect, a domestic mine. A case study on circularity in EV batteries made the strategic argument that recycling is not waste management but supply security.

The case studies did a lot of work here. Alongside circularity, the cohort examined a disruptive gigafactory scenario, the electrification of off-highway vehicles, power storage in microgrids, fast charging, and the US battery supply chain itself. Together they turned the cohort's themes into decisions participants could argue through. By the end, the group shared a clearer sense of how policy, materials, manufacturing and recycling interlock, and why no single one of them can be understood alone.

Key Takeaways

• Cohort 6 (2022) placed the battery supply chain at its centre, mapping who owns each link from mine to cell and why that ownership matters.
• Policy was a leading force, with sessions on US funding opportunities, EU industry tracking, and the strategic challenge of competing with China.
• Feedstock analysis, including estimating requirements for a vertically integrated NMC811 facility, turned supply chain abstraction into concrete tonnage.
• Sodium-ion cells and material-side innovations reflected a sector trying to redesign its materials, not just source them differently.
• Battery energy storage systems and net-zero electricity anchored the storage thread, including BESS for grid inertia, microgrids, and explosion protection.
• Digital and automation topics, from pilot-plant digitisation to simultaneous engineering, showed the industry maturing operationally.
• Battery recycling and circularity case studies closed the loop, framing material recovery as supply security rather than waste management.