Canada's ATS aims to lead the battery pack when it comes to automation

As global automakers make the high-profile transition to electric vehicles, the Canadian automation company ATS Corp. is quietly carving out a niche by building the assembly lines that enable automakers to piece together the batteries.

The battery pack tucked beneath the floor of a typical EV has about 6,500 cells, and the automated lines made by ATS can produce one of these packs in just 60 seconds, said Udo Panenka, president of industrial automation at the Cambridge, Ont.-based company.

“That means you have 13,000 welds that you need to produce in one minute,” Panenka said. “If one weld is defective, the range of the vehicle drops by 1.7 per cent, and people don’t want to have the range dropping.”

The stakes are higher still, given that many of ATS’ customers run their automated lines 24/7, producing US$1 billion to $2 billion worth of battery packs per year on each line.

Announcements of big-ticket battery plants have become commonplace across North America only in the past few years, but ATS has been designing and building automated battery lines for about 15 years, said company CEO Andrew Hider.

As EVs have transitioned from smaller-scale production to the mass market, the company has expanded its core technology and has been pushed by customers that need specialized solutions for their batteries, Hider told Automotive News Canada.

“Often these customers are making these big announcements, and then they’ve got to figure [execution] out,” he said.

‘SUPERAGGRESSIVE TIMELINES’

With the auto industry shifting to EVs at high speed, battery projects involve fast-changing technology and “superaggressive timelines,” Panenka said.

“Everything changes,” he said. “Just one thing doesn’t change, and that’s the launch date.”

ATS has delivered more than 110 battery assembly systems to customers worldwide, with most of its early orders coming from Europe before the recent shift to North America. Decades before the battery boom, ATS built automation equipment for gearboxes, motors and other auto components.

ATS, founded in 1978, also makes automated lines for customers in health care, the food industry, consumer products and energy. It officially rebranded as ATS Corp. in 2022, paring down from ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc.

ATS has six manufacturing plants in Canada and employs about 1,400 people. Globally, it has more than 50 manufacturing sites and more than 6,000 employees.

Growing battery business has added to this tally. In March 2022, for instance, the company opened a pair of 240,000-square-foot (22,000-square-metre) plants on the outskirts of Columbus, Ohio, that will produce assembly lines for battery modules.

HOW TO PACK A BATTERY

Modules are an intermediate product in the EV battery production process. A finished EV battery, which typically weighs 1,000 to 2,000 pounds (450 to 900 kilograms), is known as a pack. It’s made up of a series of modules, which are orderly collections of battery cells.

ATS steps in at the module-assembly stage, after cells have been produced at either an adjoining or off-site cell-manufacturing plant.

The company’s automated process, Panenka said, begins with validating the incoming cells and sorting them to ensure only cells with identical electrical characteristics are placed together. The cells are then connected, typically through high-speed laser welding, a process that leaves no margin for error. Once pieced together, the collection of cells is put in an enclosure, then cabling is inserted and cooling devices are installed.

Throughout the manufacturing process, ATS performs quality checks.

“You want to find any potential issues as early as possible,” Panenka said. Otherwise, you could get to the end of the line before discovering a flaw, leading to as much as $15,000 in wasted battery material.

ATS meticulously records the manufacturing data for every module and pack built, keeping it to cross-check against any problems that prompt a vehicle recall months or years in the future.

The company also services and updates its assembly lines. Even small process improvements can mean huge savings on $2 billion worth of battery packs per year, Panenka said.

ATS uses digital twin technology to simulate changes before upgrading the robotic code that runs the automated lines. This minimizes downtime so that module and pack assembly can continue running at capacity.

With battery technology continuing to evolve, ATS also designs its lines to be upgradable for next-generation lithium ion batteries and the eventual shift to solid-state battery packs.

CUSTOMERS CONFIDENTIAL

ATS has built automated battery assembly lines for 12 automakers and battery manufacturers. Hider cited confidentiality in not listing them, but General Motors is one.

As ATS cut the ribbon at its new Ohio sites last year, the company said the plants would initially build automated module lines for GM’s Ultium batteries.

Hider expects to see further growth in ATS’s battery business as EV adoption picks up speed worldwide.

Over the past year, the company disclosed more than $500 million in new EV battery system sales. As of Jan. 1, it had a $887 million backlog of orders in its transportation division, primarily driven by the EV segment.