Stellantis is progressing in the transformation towards electric propulsion. Progress in battery cell and pack performance is made. Increasing production volumes will result in significant increase in the demand on raw materials and will require reuse of materials recovered in battery recycling when batteries have reached end-of-life. As sustainability is the driver for electrification, all steps along the process need to be evaluated and optimized. This presentation will address sustainability as a goal, battery material options, battery refurbishment, progressing regulation and Circular economy.

When engineering or benchmarking complex systems, it’s critical to focus on the right metrics. This is no less true with battery design than with anything else. Because cells are the basic building blocks of any battery system, it’s easy for teams to focus on cell-level metrics only, losing the focus on what’s really important, which is fully-integrated pack and vehicle metrics. Mr. Oury will discuss the different transfer functions that incrementally reduce cell-level energy density as cells are integrated into modules and packs, and will propose a method for energy density benchmarking across disparate battery designs.

Automotive LIB cells have undergone major advancements on all levels, from materials to cell structure in the last years. Based on a unique database on vehicle sales and EV battery properties, we present a statistical analysis of the last 10 years of EV battery market, showing developments in the most important cell design parameters like cell format and energy density leading to cutting edge concepts like 4680 cylindrical or large cell-to-pack type prismatic cells.

For the past two years, the trilogue of the European Institutions has been negotiating the legislation that will regulate the whole life cycle of a battery for the next decade. A piece of legislation that was labeled by the European Commission as the new “Environmental legislation 2.0."  Finally, co-legislators have agreed to ambitious targets and tight timelines for the collection of batteries, material recovery, and recycling efficiencies that will have a considerable impact on the industry. Hence, it is of paramount importance the analysis of the outcome of the Batteries Regulation legislative process and its impact for the industry.

Europe leads the world on environmental reform, through the EU’s taxonomy to reduce CO2 emissions by 55% in 2030 vs. 1990 and a net zero 2050 target, with the European Green Deal’s €1.8 trillion of finance supporting an energy transition needed to reach them. Electrification of energy supply requires storage, and batteries are part of the solution. So far, €127 billion has been invested across the value chain with ~80GWh of capacity in 2022 expected to grow to exceed 1TWh by 2030. The new EU Battery Regulation promotes transparency, sustainability and circularity, benefitting European customers and the environment, meaning rapid market growth doesn’t come with negative impact. Such significant targets, however, creates challenges, especially in a newly emerging market with strong reliance on mined natural resource use. This presentation will address the European battery industry status and outlook, and its opportunities and challenges, with a policy context.

Multi-functional venting units are essential components in holistic battery safety concepts, enabling pressure equalization between pack interior and environment in regular operation, as well as effective overpressure release during thermal runaway, even  reducing the risk of battery fires. With an increasing variety in battery pack designs and cell chemistries, the functionality of venting units must be adapted accordingly. This presentation will show current trends and solutions in venting unit engineering.

Current and future battery developments are facing amongst others the following two main challenges: thermal safety and fast charging capability. On the one hand, this is driven by cell selection to ensure high charging capability on cell level while understanding and anticipating the cell hazard behavior for development. On the other hand, these two challenges require a smart design solution combining an efficient cooling system with low thermal resistance and high cooling power, with a design considering a thermal propagation safe design. AVL will show design and cooling system innovation to address these challenges.

What is the best compromise regarding the KPIs Energy Densities (Wh/ltr./Wh/kg), Safety (especially thermal propagation), Fast Charging capabilities, Lifetime, and Cost based on a given skateboard platform of an EV-car? This presentation will show new design approaches based on an immersion-cooled battery and a new fluid with high fire resistance. Test results regarding the cooling performance at a fast charging profile will be pointed out. Furthermore, safety test results show new possibilities to prevent thermal propagation.

Main hurdles when it comes to convincing customer to switch to fully electric vehicles are range anxiety, charging time and safety. Immersion Cooling, also known as direct liquid cooling, enables sustained High Power Charging (HPC) of more than 250 kW resulting in charging times as short as a conventional refueling process of an ICE car. At the same time immersion cooling improves battery safety significantly and has the potential to prolong the life of the battery pack.

The strong transition towards electrified vehicles confronts batteries for low voltage power-net with a significantly changed set of requirements. While the 12 V batteries for BEV and PHEV can be reduced in size and capacity compared to traditional starter batteries, they have to comply to specific performance and functional safety requirements. In particular low temperature fallback load support maintaining a narrow voltage window poses a specific challenge to the battery technology.

EU CO2 emission reduction targets are the main motivation for introduction of mHEV with 48V batteries in Europe. Depending on the 48V mHEV hybrid architecture P0 to P4, different functions like pure electric driving, in addition to regenerative braking and boosting need to be enabled by the 48V battery. The paper will describe the different requirements, the design and validation of the 48V mHEV battery for a selected application.

Future vehicle applications, independent of the propulsion type, will have new requirements for the low-voltage power net architecture. One key element will be the stability of the low-voltage power net for autonomies driving functions. In emergency cases, a redundant energy source must be available for the safe operation of the vehicle. This presentation will carry out the advantages of lead-based batteries as a redundant energy source for those functions.