How The Volvo EX60’s Battery Modifications How EVs Are Constructed

The Volvo EX60 heralds a brand new period for the Swedish automaker. With class main vary of as much as 400 miles, blistering charging speeds of as much as 370 kilowatts and a raft of high-tech options, it’s set to turn into Volvo’s most superior EV but.

When it arrives within the U.S. this spring, the EX60 may also put Volvo in uncommon firm. The EX60 will be a part of a couple of different EVs just like the Porsche Cayenne Electrical and the Tesla Mannequin Y to make use of a very cutting-edge structural battery design. The automaker stated the EX60 will get what it calls a “cell-to-body” battery.

“It is an architectural breakthrough for us when it comes to how we construct the automobile,” Anders Bell, the Chief Engineering and Know-how Officer at Volvo Vehicles, instructed InsideEVs in an interview on the EX60 debut occasion. “It is a huge (enchancment), we save plenty of weight, we save plenty of price, which is vital as a result of meaning we are able to decrease the value for the purchasers and promote extra BEVs,” he added.

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Supply: Volvo

To grasp why that issues, let’s simply step again and have a look at how EV batteries are sometimes constructed. Right this moment, most automakers depend on a module-based structure, the place particular person cells are grouped into rectangular modules, that are then assembled right into a battery pack that’s bolted to the automobile’s chassis.

GM’s battery packs, for instance, use the traditional modular strategy.

It’s a confirmed, versatile strategy utilized by a lot of the trade, but it surely comes with trade-offs in complexity and area effectivity. Modules require extra elements, which will increase the burden of the pack. The newer cell-to-pack batteries eradicate modules by stacking cells immediately into the pack, leading to higher power density and decrease weight.

Volvo is pushing the idea additional with the EX60 by adopting cell-to-body building. On this design, the battery pack itself turns into a load-bearing a part of the automobile’s construction. Meaning sections of the ground immediately combine the cells, and so they successfully turn into a part of the automobile’s skeleton.

Photograph by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs

The strategy stems from the automaker’s quest to cut back elements and weight. “We determined to standardize the whole lot, all of the modularity round massive prismatic cells with the terminals dealing with down,” Bell stated. “By making the battery a part of the construction, we now have a intelligent software of adhesives between the cells and to the partitions, after which we do a full packing closure,” he added.

Photograph by: Volvo

This shift turns into particularly clear if you have a look at the numbers. The EX90 will get a 111-kilowatt-hour battery pack, of which 107 kWh is usable. That’s sufficient to ship about 310 miles of EPA vary. The EX60’s prime P12 AWD trim, nonetheless, will get a 117 kWh battery, of which 112 kWh is usable, and Volvo says that can ship as much as 400 miles of vary.

In different phrases, Volvo has managed to suit extra battery capability—and unlock extra vary—inside a automobile that’s almost 10 inches shorter and in addition has a barely smaller wheelbase.

Porsche Cayenne Electrical: The pack is extra immediately built-in into the chassis and ground.

Photograph by: Porsche

That’s the payoff of the cell-to-body design mixed with the newer, extra space-efficient SPA3 platform, which merely packages power way more effectively than the SPA2 structure underpinning the EX90.

In line with Volvo, the cell-to-body battery improves power density by 20%, reduces general weight, makes use of fewer uncooked supplies, and takes up much less area contained in the automobile. The corporate additionally claims 31% quicker charging and a 37% discount in CO2 footprint, which is form of a testomony to how structural batteries can ship advantages properly past simply vary figures.

Photograph by: Volvo

Servicing the battery, Bell stated, should not be an issue. In line with Volvo, greater than 90% of battery-related service requests are tied to electronics quite than the cells themselves. On older EVs, servicing typically requires dropping the whole pack from the automobile, which is time-consuming and tedious. On the EX60, in contrast, technicians can entry the battery by merely opening the enclosure.

That stated, it’s nonetheless early days, and the true serviceability of those batteries stays to be seen. However with Tesla, Porsche, Volvo and a rising checklist of Chinese language automakers transferring in the direction of cell-to-pack, it’s clearly the way forward for how batteries will probably be packaged.

Extra reporting by Mack Hogan.

Contact the writer: suvrat.kothari@insideevs.com