By Nick Carey

LONDON, Feb 18 (Reuters) - British startup Ionetic, which develops electric vehicle battery packs for low-volume automakers, has launched production at a UK pilot plant as it scales up for projects with manufacturers, the company said on Tuesday.

The company's 5 million pound ($6.3 million) plant in Brackley, Northamptonshire comes as Ionetic is working on EV battery packs for a number of British and U.S. automakers, CEO James Eaton told Reuters.

Major global automakers have committed to investing hundreds of billions of dollars to develop EVs, the most complex and expensive parts of which are the battery pack and software system to run it.

Ionetic is targeting lower-volume manufacturers making everything from buses to commercial vehicles, sports cars, off-road vehicles and even golf carts or beach buggies that would struggle with the expense of developing EVs.

"The really big players can throw hundreds of millions or even billions at electrification," Eaton said. "But around 90% to 95% of manufacturers are small and don't have hundreds of millions of pounds to go electric."

He said that while an automaker could expect to spend upwards of 30 million pounds on an in-house EV battery pack, in general Ionetic can develop one for customers for under a million pounds.

"We want customers to spend as little as possible to get to production with a great battery pack," Eaton added.

Low-volume automakers could opt for generic existing off-the-shelf battery pack technology, but could end up with a product that does not meet their needs for range, power and performance, Eaton said.

The startup has an ongoing research and development project with bus maker Alexander Dennis, a unit of Canada's NFI Group NFI.TO, but Eaton said he could not yet disclose which other automakers the company is working with.

Ionetic has partnered with industrial automation firm Rockwell Automation ROK.N to provide hardware and software for its pilot plant. Rockwell has provided digital twin software to Ionetic to test packs virtually before it invests in production, Eaton said.

($1 = 0.7942 pounds)

(Reporting by Nick Carey; Editing by Susan Fenton)

((nick.carey@thomsonreuters.com; +44 7385 414 954;))