Before I started Vaulta, I didn’t have batteries in mind. I was working as a designer across renewables, defence, aerospace, consumer products. The work was broad, but the common thread was always design. Not in the aesthetic sense, but in the practical one: how things function, how people interact with them, how they get repaired, or don’t.
Industrial design taught me that if something’s frustrating to use, it’s probably also frustrating to build, service, or throw away. And that stuck with me.
The Problem That Wouldn’t Leave Me Alone
At some point, I started paying more attention to how batteries were made. What I saw didn’t make sense. Sealed units that couldn’t be opened, designs that made repair impossible, waste that felt built-in.
I wasn’t trying to start a company at the time. I just wanted to see if I could do it better. So I sketched, prototyped, tested. What came out of that process was the core idea behind Vaulta: that batteries should be built like they’re meant to last, to be repaired, to be reused. How can we possible move to this technology without addressing this issue? Years on, the penny appears to have dropped, and I feel like Vaulta has had a role in that.
Human-Centred Design, in Practice
At Vaulta, I don’t talk about “user experience” in the typical tech sense. But that’s exactly what we’re focused on. Our systems must be easy to install, easy to maintain, and easy to service. Systems that don’t require specialist tools or a week of training. Systems that installers don’t swear at. Installers still swear at alot of things (and I hear those words too), but it's good to always have a feedback loop and something to improve on...
That shows up in the details, like our casing designs that clip together cleanly without glue or heat. And in the bigger picture, like how we track and support every component through its full lifecycle.
And while our systems are built to be hands-off but can be hands-on, they’re also designed to be watched over remotely. Our monitoring tools make it feel like there’s a technician standing next to the battery at all times, keeping an eye on performance, spotting problems early, and making support far simpler for the people who need it.
It’s all design. Not the flashy kind. The useful kind.
The Role of AI in Design. Supporting, Not Replacing
We use AI and automation where it makes sense. It helps us see trends, catch issues early, and optimise performance across fleets of batteries. But it doesn’t replace the fundamentals.
What matters most is how the system is designed in the first place - how it fits together, how it’s serviced, how it can be recovered or repurposed down the track. AI doesn’t change that. It just helps us do it better.
We see it as an extra set of eyes, not a replacement for hands-on engineering. As with many applications where AI is building a presence, you can't yet replace human connection and design intent, although we are training GPT's and agents to accelerate this gap.
Still a Designer
Even now, I don’t really think of myself as a battery guy. I’m still a designer at heart. I look for friction points and figure out how to remove them. Sometimes that’s about materials. Sometimes it’s about monitoring. Most of the time, it’s just about paying close attention to what people actually need.
Vaulta started because I couldn’t stop thinking about how it could be done better. That’s still what drives me.
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