VW develops e-car drive system now fully in-house due to efficiency benefits
At its Tech Day, VW announced that it would be developing the electric powertrain entirely in-house, as the efficiency advantage would be up to 20 percent.
The snake's nest on the right shows the thermal management system in the current MEB; to the left is a modular, compact and higher-efficiency unit as will be installed in the subsequent generation.
(Bild: Volkswagen)
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Volkswagen has decided to develop all the "central components" for its upcoming electric car drives itself. In addition to the battery and the electric motor, this also includes the pulse inverter and the thermal management system. The automaker cites considerable efficiency and cost benefits as the reason, saying that only "by optimally matching the individual components is it possible to achieve up to 20Â percent more efficiency."
Technology leadership for the e-car
In today's announcement, Volkswagen describes itself as one of the "very few automakers in the world that will be able to offer a holistically optimized overall system in the future". The company is aiming to become the technology leader in e-cars, says Thomas Schmall, member of the Board of Management responsible for technology.
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Thanks to its modular design, the pulse inverter should be able to be used in various power classes from small cars "to 500Â kW and more". The modular principle is already to be incorporated into the next MEB generation, about which Volkswagen has admittedly not yet published a time frame.
Compact module instead of long line
Volkswagen wants to move away from the thermal management set-up that is common today, with a lot of components distributed across the vehicle, connected by efficiency-reducing, long cables, in order to be able to use an "extremely compact, integrated thermal module". They call it an "all-in-one module" and want to have it take care of "the entire air conditioning, including the high-voltage battery" in the future.
Thermal synergy effects
The thermal synergy effects used throughout the car should help improve range and fast-charging capability. In addition, it should be significantly lighter, more robust and more efficient than today's systems. As with the inverter, Volkswagen also wants to strongly standardize the thermal management module across all model series. Here, too, the aim is to exploit economies of scale in order to reduce costs.
The development of the so-called unit cell, which is to become the new basis for batteries in Volkswagen Group vehicles from 2025 onwards and "set a new benchmark in battery technology," is already well advanced, Volkswagen writes in its statement.
(fpi)