Ohm Smart Car Battery

Rethinking The Way We Use Car Batteries

Sophic Design partnered with OHM to develop an innovative car battery that completely reimagines what technology and performance look like in a car battery.

The Problem With Car Batteries

What’s the problem with car batteries? The answer is pretty simple: they’re terrible. To start with, they are HEAVY which makes it difficult for some people to replace them when they die. To make things worse, there isn’t really a good place to grip that heavy battery with both hands when pulling out the old one and installing the new one which makes injuring yourself in the process more likely. Car batteries also have a LIMITED LIFESPAN so as the battery's ability to hold a charge diminishes so does its performance and reliability. This problem is compounded by extreme temperatures (both hot and cold) which can cause them to FAIL SUDDENLY, leaving drivers stranded and in need of a jump start or a replacement.

New vehicles are made to include standard car battery pan sizes, receptacles, and mounting features all built into the design of the car to fit an assortment of batteries from different manufacturers. This makes changing the dimensions and the volume of the battery difficult or impossible because doing so makes it no longer compatible with the cars they service. While Ohm’s technology represented a huge step forward in miniaturizing the car battery it still needed to fit within the standard vehicle space allotted for batteries.

What if there were a battery that helped you anticipate these problems BEFORE they happen?

Reimagining The Car Battery

Ohm set out to develop a car battery using innovative technology that lasts more than twice as long as traditional lead-acid car batteries and is smart enough to prevent you from accidentally draining your car battery if (for example) you forget to turn your lights off. The Ohm battery automatically turns itself off when power gets critically low and turns itself back on when you go to turn on your car. No more getting stranded with a dead battery!

Ohm’s compact array of battery cells also makes the internal componentry significantly smaller and lighter compared to traditional lead-acid batteries. Lead acid car batteries normally weigh about 40 lbs (18 kg) but at only 6 lbs (2.7 kg) the Ohm battery weighs a mere fraction of what you might expect a conventional car battery to weigh! Its compact internal architecture makes it smaller and lighter and its unique battery chemistry contains no leads or acids making it better for the environment.

Standard Sizes & Compatibility

While making a car battery that is smaller and lighter sounds like a no-brainer, there are issues around compatibility and standard sizes for gasoline-powered cars and trucks that must be taken into consideration when deploying a new and unique technology like the one developed by Ohm.

Design Opportunities

While Ohm’s new technology presented some compatibility challenges it also presented an exciting landscape of new opportunities to improve and redefine what people expect from their car batteries and how they use them.

Boxy Batteries

Conventional lead-acid batteries are designed with maximum efficiency in mind. Because of the vehicle space restrictions outlined earlier, most battery manufacturers are obsessed with packing the available space with the maximum amount of chemicals to increase performance. This space-maximizing strategy typically leads to boxy designs with sharp corners and a bucket + lid construction intended to streamline manufacturing and minimize wasted space.

Space To Waste

Ohm’s unique internal architecture occupies a remarkably small space compared to the volume of a standard car battery. This meant that we were able to consider a variety of unconventional shapes, product footprints, and surfacing details when designing the outer housing of the product because maximizing space efficiency inside the allotted space of a standard car battery pan didn’t have to be the primary consideration driving the design process.

Improving Ergonomics

Although the weight of the Ohm battery (6 lbs) is significantly reduced compared to most lead-acid batteries (about 40 lbs) creating dedicated grab points for lifting, replacing, and handling the battery continued to be a priority throughout the design process because it offered a significant opportunity to improve the product experience and ergonomics. The amount of underutilized internal space created by the smaller battery array allowed us to explore a range of handle options and grip points.

Concept Exploration

During the initial exploration phases we considered a variety of aesthetics ranging from variations on traditional car battery shapes and aesthetics to more aggressive and non-traditional form development.

Final Design

The Ohm car battery’s final design emphasizes a non-traditional form that showcases the space efficiency of its internal components and technology as well as the elevated ergonomics of the wrapping handle while maintaining compatibility with standard battery pan sizes, volumes, and mounting features.