Segment
Battery cells: chemistry, format and pack
The cell is the unit of cost, energy and risk in an electric vehicle, and it is also the component behind grid storage and the backup systems in data centres. This branch covers what determines a cell's properties, the formats they are built in, and what happens when hundreds are assembled into a pack.
In one sentence
A battery cell is the smallest complete electrochemical unit — cathode, anode, electrolyte and separator in a sealed enclosure — which is combined in large numbers to form a vehicle or storage pack.
Cells are the largest single cost in an electric vehicle and the item whose price trajectory determines when electric and combustion vehicles reach parity. That price is set by materials, by factory yield, and by how much energy a given chemistry stores per kilogram.
Three decisions define a battery product. The chemistry sets the fundamental trade-off between energy, cost, safety and life. The format — cylindrical, prismatic or pouch — sets how cells are manufactured, cooled and packaged. The pack architecture determines how much of the cell's energy density survives to vehicle level, and how a single cell failure is contained.
How this breaks down
Split by the three decisions that define a battery: what is inside, what shape it is, and how it is assembled.
- Battery cellsthis page
- Cell chemistryCathode, anode, electrolyte and separator — and the trade-offs none of them escape.Breaks down into: LFP cathodes · Nickel-rich cathodes · Anodes · Electrolyte and separator6 pages belowChokepoint
- Cell manufacturing equipmentCoating, calendering, winding and formation machines — the capital behind every gigafactory announcement.Breaks down into: Electrode equipment · Assembly equipment · Formation equipment3 pages below
- Battery managementMeasuring every cell, balancing them, and estimating a state of charge nothing can measure directly.Definition page
- Cell formatsThree shapes, three manufacturing processes, three sets of consequences at pack level.Definition pageChokepoint
- Packs and thermalCell-to-pack architecture, cooling, the management system, and stopping one bad cell taking the rest.Breaks down into: Pack structure · Battery thermal · Propagation containment3 pages below
- Solid-state batteriesReplacing the liquid electrolyte with a solid, what that would buy, and why it has taken so long.Definition pageChokepoint
What this depends on
1 of these is marked as a chokepoint: a handful of qualified suppliers, a multi-year lead time, or a single geography.
- Supply chainChokepoint
Refined battery materials
Lithium, nickel, graphite and their processed forms, most of which are refined far from where cells are assembled.
Battery materials
What depends on this
Other pages in this map that name Battery cells as something they cannot do without.
- Data centres · Power · Distribution and backupUninterruptible suppliesLithium uninterruptible supplies draw on the same cell supply chain as vehicles and grid storage, and are a small customer within it.
- Energy and gridStorageGrid storage draws on the same cell supply chain as vehicles, mostly iron-phosphate chemistry.
Companies across Battery cells
Every company named on a step below this page, ordered by how many of those steps it appears at. Compiled from the pages themselves rather than written separately, so the two cannot disagree. Not a ranking and not a recommendation.
- ManzGermany3 steps
Cell manufacturing equipment · Electrode equipment · Assembly equipment
75 more companies appear at a single step each; they are named on the pages for those steps.
How these pages are written
Each page explains one technology in plain language, states what it depends on, and names companies by what they supply at that step. Company roles are described qualitatively and deliberately carry no market shares, revenue figures or rankings — those change faster than an explainer can, and a stale number is worse than none. Ticker links point at company pages on this site and are provided for reference only.
Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or a forecast. A company named on a page about a technology is not thereby a good investment, and the chokepoints described are structural facts about supply chains rather than predictions about prices. Technology moves; where a page describes something as unresolved or in development, that was true when it was written.