Navitas Systems

Navitas Systems was formed in 2011 out of three pieces: MicroSun Innovative Energy Storage Solutions, MicroSun Electronics, and the Government Solutions Group that A123 Systems had built in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That last piece is the important one. A123's government business had been doing US Army and Department of Defense battery development work, and buying it gave Navitas an existing defence programme base rather than a standing start. The company is still headquartered at the same Ann Arbor site. In 2019 East Penn Manufacturing, one of the largest lead battery makers in the world, acquired a majority interest, which gave Navitas access to manufacturing scale and quality systems that a company of its size would otherwise have had to build.

The pitch is that cells, modules, packs and battery management systems all come from the same house. That vertical position is unusual for a mid-sized battery firm and it is what lets Navitas do the odd-format work that its defence customers ask for. The clearest example is a round pouch cell, described by the company as a pancake shaped cell, now in high volume production. That cell exists because some undersea and sonar equipment has a cylindrical pressure housing and a conventional prismatic or cylindrical cell wastes the volume. Built on that cell, Navitas produces a 150 volt sonar battery, also in high volume.

The other publicly described military product is a 6T lithium battery for military vehicles, a 24 volt 90 amp-hour unit in the NATO standard case format, which the company has taken through final qualification. Alongside those, Navitas says it has advanced battery product and system development programmes running for soldier, undersea, aircraft and space applications that it does not describe publicly, which is consistent with the government development work it inherited.

The commercial side is larger by volume. Motive power battery solutions cover forklifts and industrial vehicles, the market East Penn knows best, and Navitas supplies lithium alternatives to the lead-acid packs traditionally used there. Transportation battery packs serve on-road and off-road electric vehicles. Mission-critical backup is a third commercial line. Across all of them the company sells individual lithium cells and battery management systems as standalone products as well as inside complete packs.

The services side is contract work rather than catalogue product. Navitas offers contract cell, module and pack manufacturing for customers who have a design but not a factory, and cell materials research and evaluation for those working further upstream. The materials work is a direct continuation of the research posture the company started with, and it means Navitas can qualify a new chemistry into a pack rather than waiting for a cell supplier to do it. For defence customers that combination matters more than raw capacity, because military battery requirements tend to be low volume, oddly shaped and heavily specification driven, which is exactly the work large cell makers are least interested in taking.