Opinion piece by Ravi K Ajjampudi – Technical Director – Engineering, ESI India
It’s a well-accepted fact that EVs are going to be the future of mobility and the race toward electrification has already started. Awareness among people is increasing by the day and urban areas are the early adopters. Electric vehicles are bringing a lot of pleasant, yet challenging changes for consumers as they get the needed reduction in the maintenance and fuel costs while they remain anxious about initial investment and lacking infrastructure. OEMs have to re-think everything from the way vehicles are engineered, manufactured and tested. While the change is for the good, for many manufacturers, such change is a long and expensive process.
Let’s begin at what is at the heart of an Electric Vehicle. EV battery has a high price tag and incidentally happens to be one of the heaviest components in the vehicle. As weight is detrimental to the range of an electric vehicle, battery design is an interesting irony that the industry is trying to overcome. Technological advances in battery development are the only viable solution to this. Lithium-ion batteries seem to be the default option for EVs currently, but OEMs are investing in new technologies such as solid-state batteries, hydrogen-powered vehicles etc. OEMs are working on both improving the existing technologies that tend to mature with time and at the same time investing in new technologies for the future. Demonstration of such technologies virtually through simulations can accelerate the research on feasibility, adoption and optimization.
As the engine is the core of the whole design process of any fossil fuel vehicle, for EVs, it is an electric motor. How these motors influence and interact with other systems like chassis, suspension, transmission, body and cabin interior etc., throws a lot of challenges. For example, when a diesel engine is present, other noises get camouflaged under loud engine noise, but as electric motors don’t make such loud noise, EVs are much quieter. And thus, one can hear motor, tire, wind noise which are on the high frequency side.
Since the engine vanishes from the front, EVs become vulnerable for frontal crash and calls for strengthening of front structures so that they can absorb the impact better. Simply adding more mass on frontal parts to enhance crash worthiness may not solve the problem as batteries are already overloading the EVs. This means how the body is constructed, what material is the best for chassis members and how those need to be joined, become some of the key design aspects that need a complete revamp.
To balance weight and strength, new materials are being tried and tested which calls for some major changes in manufacturing processes as well. These processes need to be validated before they can be deployed in plant production. Such changes call for huge investments and are also very time consuming. Validating the manufacturing processes virtually with the help of technological advances seems to be the way all the OEMs are investing into.
Coming to the other aspects in EVs, the technology companies are ensuring that the EVs are far more intelligent and independent than their predecessors. Autonomous driving is one such technology that is becoming popular and almost all vehicles may use it, or it will be available as a standby technology in coming years. Airports could be the early adopters of fully autonomous vehicles as the lanes are dedicated and the paths are predefined. Sensors are the heart of such autonomous vehicles which make the vehicles intelligent. Sensor technology requires a lot of innovation as the vehicle undergoes various rough environmental conditions like water, dust, heat, etc. Sensors face challenges as they need to work all the time to enable the vehicle to make intelligent decisions all the time. For EVs, supporting such technology like LiDAR, comes as an additional burden on the battery.
The main drawback of having to rely on a battery as an energy source, is the time it takes to charge. This predicament is being addressed by advanced technology like fast charging or battery swapping etc. There are already technologies on trial in Northern Europe where vehicles could be charged on the go through an embedded rail along the road, which could also become wireless someday.
Researchers are working on how to leverage solar energy by improving the power density of solar panels. Such high-power density panels could utilize the limited area available on the car, to generate enough power to charge the batteries. This also opens several other interesting possibilities like charging while parking in addition to charging on the go. Such technologies will enable batteries to be smaller, thus reducing the carbon footprint of manufacturing EVs.
As every aspect of automotive design is going through radical changes, OEMs need to have agile development strategies to adapt to these changes quickly. It’s believed that such transformation within the required timeframe, can only be made possible by leveraging virtual technologies. Virtual Prototyping allows OEMs to validate the manufacturing, assembling, and behavior of their product in different environment minimizing their costs and time to market, without sacrificing safety and quality.
At the end of the day, all new connected, autonomous, shared, electrified (CASE) business models stand and fall with the trust in those next generation technologies prior to market launch and throughout the lifecycle. Looking at the tremendous speed of developments and the rise of start-ups, manufacturers have no choice but to get it right, the first time.
By Ravi K Ajjampudi – Technical Director – Engineering, ESI India
Very good summary of current status of Auto industry, clear and concise as usual, thanks !