Volvo EX60 Will Get Two Battery Chemistries, New Sort Of Cell Format

Volvo’s turnaround plan consists of not solely enhancing its software program, but in addition equipping its future electrical automobiles with a number of the most superior battery know-how obtainable exterior China.

The Ex60 mid-size electrical SUV will go on sale within the U.S. and world markets subsequent yr, and it’ll have battery choices with two totally different chemistries, Anders Bell, Volvo’s Chief Expertise Officer, informed InsideEVs in an interview on the model’s U.S. manufacturing plant in Ridgeville, South Carolina.

Bell didn’t affirm the precise battery chemistry on the EX60, however prompt that lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) batteries are “completely” on the desk for the next-generation SPA3 platform that the EV will trip on.

Volvo’s two main battery suppliers are China’s CATL and Korea’s LG Vitality Resolution. CATL manufactures each LFP and conventional nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries, whereas LGES primarily makes high-nickel cells.

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The Volvo Ex30 already will get two battery choices in Europe, a 51-kilowatt-hour LFP pack and a 69-kWh NMC variant. Solely the latter is out there within the U.S. Volvo would possibly comply with an analogous technique with the EX60. The larger information, nonetheless, is the shift to prismatic cells.

“We have now standardized a type issue of cells, giant prismatic, which can then permit us to be cell omnivores as a lot as attainable,” Bell mentioned, referring to the form of the cell permitting it to accommodate any battery chemistry.

BMW’s spherical battery cells and prismatic battery cells.

Prismatic cells are frequent in China and at the moment are gaining reputation within the West. Volkswagen plans to make use of prismatic cells for its inexpensive EVs beginning subsequent yr. Normal Motors can even use large-format prismatic batteries in its full-size SUVs and vans beginning in 2028, that includes lithium-manganese-rich (LMR) batteries. “It’s like a VHS cassette, however barely larger,” Bell mentioned.

He added that the prismatic cells permit value and weight financial savings whereas additionally making the physique stiffer. Furthermore, the EX60 will use a cell-to-body strategy, that means that the battery might be structural to the SPA3 platform, not a bolt-on addition—this enables automakers to simplify the batteries and pack extra vitality inside.

The EX60 can even characteristic different huge upgrades, resembling Nvidia’s Drive Thor pc, able to 1,000 trillion operations per second. It’s going to additionally get the third era of Volvo’s drive models with 93% effectivity, the automaker mentioned throughout its Capital Markets Day in Sweden final yr.

It will likely be made at Volvo’s predominant plant in Gothenburg, Sweden, and go on sale someday subsequent yr. It’s going to lock horns with the Tesla Mannequin Y, BMW IX3 and the brand new electrical Mercedes GLCamongst others. In different phrases, count on it to be Volvo’s most essential EV but.

Have a tip? Contact the writer: suvrat.kothari@insideevs.com