Automakers are looking at ways to build a car’s fuel cells into the frame, making electric travel cheaper, more spacious, and with ranges of 620 miles (620 miles).
WEIGHT IS ONE of the biggest nightmares for automotive designers and engineers. Batteries are overly heavy and dense, and as the internal combustion engine is rapidly being retired for an electric future, the question of how to deal with the extra mass of an EV battery becomes increasingly essential. If you want to build an electric vehicle with a more extended range, installing a larger battery for that range is not necessarily the solution. Then you would have to enlarge the brakes to be able to stop. The heavier car, and because of the bigger brakes, now needs bigger wheels, and the weight of all those parts would require a more robust structure. That’s what car designers call “reel weight,” The problem with batteries is you have to lug them around.
Euan McTurk, Battery Electrochemistry Advisor at Plug Life Consulting, since technologies such as cell-to-pack, cell-to-body, and cell-to-chassis battery designs allow for more efficient distribution of batteries in the car; we have a hypothetical perfect EV battery much closer. Means every part of the battery pack stores and releases energy,” he says. Traditionally, EV batteries are made up of used cell modules, which are then interconnected into packs. BYD pioneered cell-to-pack technology, which eliminates the middle stage of the module and places the cells directly in the box.
According to Richie Frost, Founder and CEO of Sprint Power, “Standard modules may fit well in one package, but they leave large areas of ‘wasted’ space on another package. Cells in any box can be maxed out by their own weight only to propel the vehicle.
Body Shop
At Tesla Battery Day 2020, the company shared information about some significant developments. As Tesla’s new 4680 battery grabbed the headlines, CEO Elon Musk and Senior Vice President Drew Baglino described how Tesla transformed automobile production by using large-scale castings to replace several smaller components. They also said that Tesla would start using cell-to-melee technology around 2023. Using the analogy of an airplane wing, where now, instead of a branch with a fuel tank inside, the tanks are wing-shaped: the duo said battery cells would be integrated into the structure of a car. Tesla has developed a new adhesive for this.
Typically, the adhesive in a battery pack holds the cells and plates of the group together and acts as a flame retardant. Tesla’s solution adds a reinforcing feature to the adhesive, making the entire battery load-bearing.
McTurk explains: “By integrating the cells into the chassis, the cells and the chassis become versatile. The cells become energy storage and structural support, while the chassis becomes structural support and protection for the cells. Parts save battery costs by 7 percent per kilowatt hour and improve vehicle range.
While Tesla’s larger-volume 4680 battery appears to play a vital role in the company’s move to a cell-to-body design, efficiency of 72 percent, and a power density of up to 255 watt-hours per kilogram. It will be a crucial part of CATL’s third-generation cell-to-packet solution and will likely form the foundation of the cell-to-packet enterprise. -Chassis offer.
An Easy Cell
For those who think these revolutionary battery technologies are still a few years away, the cell to the case is already here with cell-to-chassis technology. Leap’s C01 sedan is due to go on sale before the end of 2022 (giving it a slightly longer range and improved crashworthiness.
Many electric vehicles were formerly built on internal combustion engine vehicle platforms, and some still are. Still, the adoption of cell-to-chassis designs will see these older platforms irrevocably replaced. According to Sprint Power’s Frost, “Most [manufacturers]’ commitment to a pure electric vehicle future, along with more integrated designs such as cell-to-chassis, will significantly improve overall electric vehicle design and performance.
While cell-to-chassis technology is undoubtedly the next step in electric vehicles, it is not a panacea. Technologies like solid-state and sodium-based batteries will likely be part of the puzzle. And the introduction of cell-to-chassis technology will undoubtedly bring new problems to the industry. For one, replacing defective cells in a cell-to-chassis case will be much more complicated since each cell is an integral part of the vehicle structure. Then the question arises what happens if the car is scrapped? The larger battery sizes in cell-to-pack and cell-to-chassis designs may limit them to network storage applications.
