Battery-powered mining trucks and excavators could replace diesel engines in some of the world’s most carbon-intensive industries, but only if the batteries can survive extreme heat, vibration, and high-power demands without catching fire. This Oxford–Fortescue WAE partnership tackles a specific gap: heavy industrial equipment needs batteries that are far more durable, safer, and cheaper over their lifetime than current electric-vehicle batteries. Mining alone accounts for significant global carbon emissions, and electrifying its machinery is a direct route to cutting them. The research focuses on four technical challenges: preventing thermal runaway (the chain reaction that causes battery fires), developing battery management systems that work reliably in harsh conditions, creating new materials that contain heat or improve cooling, and using AI to analyse lab and field data faster. If successful, the results would first appear in mining and transport equipment, then spread to motorsport, freight, and high-performance vehicles. The project does not aim to invent a fundamentally new battery chemistry; instead, it refines how existing battery systems are built, monitored, and protected—making them safe and economical enough for industries that currently have no clean alternative to diesel.
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Our vision is a partnership between Fortescue WAE and the University of Oxford to establish the UK as a global R&D centre for high power, high energy, durable batteries required for heavy industry sectors. Building on more than a decade of collaboration focused on energy storage, and recent investments in battery manufacturing near Oxford, the research programme will explore critical research themes including safety, battery management systems, materials for thermal management, and the use of AI for lab and field data analysis. In the context of a rapid global shift towards clean energy technologies, there remains a substantial challenge to reduce the energy and carbon emissions associate with mining and related industries. Electrification of equipment is a solution to this, but significant improvements in lifetime cost, performance and asset management are necessary to realise the full benefits of improved carbon emissions and energy usage. The objective of this partnership is to co-develop integrated academic-industry research on battery safety, management and systems, pulling academic insights directly into industrial products. First, regarding safety, the project aims to improve understanding of thermal runaway, which can lead to serious hazards for battery applications, leveraging enhanced safety testing processes, modelling, post-mortem diagnostics, and standards. Second, for battery management systems, we aim to ensure models, diagnostics and controls are tailored for extreme environments, and will exploit compact physical models, non-invasive instrumentation, and AI to generate computationally efficient and accurate estimation of critical states. Third, for thermal management we aim to develop new thermal barrier materials that can contain thermal runaway, and thermal interface materials to ensure good heat transfer to cooling systems. Fourthly, the integration of AI techniques will be a key theme running through the project, aiming to accelerate analysis of X-ray imaging lab data and time series lab and field data, providing insights for device and system development. Finally, regular horizon scanning exercises will ensure that the programme is flexible and responsive to new applications and translational opportunities as they arrive. The immediate application of the results will be to heavy electrified industrial products, such as mining and transportation equipment; there will also be parallel opportunities to apply results in motorsport, freight and high-performance vehicles.?
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