Britishvolt is proud to announce that its development 21700 cells have passed industry standard tests UN38.3
CENEX/LCV, Millbrook, UK – Battery technology pioneer Britishvolt has successfully passed essential industry standard battery cell safety tests UN38.3 and will shortly be shipping its development 21700 cells to seven customers for further testing.
Nearly all lithium batteries are required to pass section 38.3 of the UN Manual of Tests and Criteria (UN Transportation Testing). The UK firm AIS, which provides a complete lithium-ion battery testing service, was the selected safety testing house and passed the cells.
“At Britishvolt, we are incredibly pleased to be working with AIS, to utilize their expertise and to help support validation of our technology in terms of safety performance. Safety is a key metric in battery cell manufacturing.
This is fantastic news, and highly encouraging that we have worked with AIS to qualify our first product samples for transportation safety testing, putting us on a path for our future development and enables us to ship test hardware to customers.” – Dr Allan Paterson, Chief Technical Officer, Britishvolt
Britishvolt is in the process of distributing cells for testing to seven customers, including blue-chip OEMs. UN38.3 certification is a significant step as it ensures cells are safe to be transported.
To be deemed safe for transportation, lithium-ion cells must not show any signs of leak, rupture, disassemble or fire hazard. An exhaustive test program consisting of a variety of simulated extreme conditions such as high altitude, very low and high temperatures and several mechanical abusive tests are performed.
Britishvolt has already signed memorandums of understanding [MoU] with five [5] separate OEMs, including Lotus and Aston Martin. Across these five customers and with one other, Britishvolt has signed two Joint Development Agreements and a pre-offtake agreement. Cumulative customer demand across MoU, JDA and pre-offtake agreements exceeds 8 GWh in 2025.
Britishvolt has already developed successful A Samples and is scaling up its unique cell formulations at UKBIC in Coventry and will also have its own scale up facilities from 2024 at Hams Hall in the Midlands, UK.
