EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 20
Battle
for the Box
Optimizing the battery pack involves a host of
manufacturing, material, and design choices.
W
hether you call them packs, boxes, or trays,
the structures that envelop and protect
EV battery cells and their supporting
electrical and thermal-management
hardware are among the industry's top subsystem
priorities. Optimizing the battery pack involves
a host of manufacturing and material choices,
mass and package tradeoffs, safety provisions,
and structural design/engineering challenges,
OEM and supplier experts told SAE Media.
" Do you want the battery pack bolted
into the vehicle or integrated into the
body structure? " asked Darren Womack,
Senior Department Manager, Body, and
Structures, at Magna's global R&D group.
Hot stamping, cold stamping, roll-forming,
hydroforming, casting and steel, aluminum,
composites, and thermoplastics - are all
raising " lively discussions " in pack development,
he said at a recent meeting of analysts.
OEMs clearly want to eliminate redundant
structure to optimize package space and reduce
mass and complexity, said Womack. Integrating
the EV battery into its surrounding platform involves
various configurations. Cell-to-pack design, currently
in production at BYD, does away with the intermediate
module stage, putting the cells directly into the pack.
Cell-to-chassis technology integrates the battery cell
with the vehicle chassis, electric drive, and thermal
management. All battery components are housed in the
vehicle body-in-white, eliminating the separate pack.
In such setups, under investigation by Tesla and others, the
chassis pan and vehicle side structure double as the battery's
bottom plate and sides. In this marriage, impact integrity,
accurate pack assembly, and robust sealing are paramount.
" Each OEM is going to want a 'playbook' - a menu
of options based on their criteria including cell form
factor, battery size, and vehicle, " explained Mario Greco,
Director of Strategy and Marketing, Global Automotive, at
aluminum specialist Novelis. " No single solution for battery
20 NOVEMBER 2023
enclosures is
going to fit everybody. "
For example, a high-volume
solution may be a stamped, singlepiece
enclosure. It might include an integrated
cooling structure because the vehicle architecture lends
itself to a cell-to-chassis design versus a cell-to-pack,
he said. " I think we'll see a convergence between the
'skateboard' and next-generation unibody architectures, "
Greco said, " because the OEM incumbents that are
stepping into EVs have all-new unibody architectures
that are designed to serve them for quite a while. "
EV BATTERY INNOVATION SPECIAL REPORT
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - Cov1
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - Cov2
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 1
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 2
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 3
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 4
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 5
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 6
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 7
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 8
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 9
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 10
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 11
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 12
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 13
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 14
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 15
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 16
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 17
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 18
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 19
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 20
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 21
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 22
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 23
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 24
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 25
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 26
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 27
EV Battery Innovation Special Report - November 2023 - 28
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