We'll explain it all. EnerDel recently fired up our first high-volume coating machine at our 92,000-square-foot Indianapolis plant. Here, the cell manufacturing process begins in the mixing room, with the combining of various active materials, such as manganese or mixed oxides for cathodes, with solvents and binders, as well as some proprietary chemicals into separate slurries for anode and cathode.

The resulting black paste is coated onto thin aluminum and copper foils, which will become the positive and negative electrodes. The films then go through a long, tunnel-like drying machine, where they bake at elevated temperatures to fasten the materials to the foils.

Automated machines precision-cut the electrodes into sheets about the size of letterhead stationery, but half as thick. From there, the electrodes go to the drying room, an ultra-clean environment where dehumidifiers keep the humidity at a very low level.

Automated stacking machines handle the next step, in which they pick up an anode, cathode and separator and stack them in a series until there are a specified number of sets of anodes and cathodes. A separate machine inserts them into a metallic, silvery pouch that will be hermetically sealed on all edges. Yet another machine fills the cell with an electrolyte, which provides conductivity between the positive and negative sides of the battery, and then hermetically seals the final side of the cell.

The assembled cells, about one-fourth of an inch thick, then leave the dry room and are charged for the first time in what is known as the formation process. The cells are then stored for a specific period of time in the aging room, after which they are all given a final 100% quality check to ensure that each individual cell meets the specification.

Once the cells are complete, our factory ships them 10 minutes away to our 35,000-square-foot pack assembly facility, where the cells are built into the packs in a highly automated process. Automated machines stack the cells into modules, and the modules are then assembled into subpacks.

These subpacks go into a final casing, which, depending on the energy requirement for the battery pack, could have anywhere from 200 to 400 cells in it and weigh up to 600 pounds. As part of the process, engineers install the critical electronic hardware and software that will allow the battery to communicate with the vehicle and monitor the performance of each individual cell and the overall pack.