WAE Technologies
WAE, the world-leading technology and engineering services business, debuted a host of electrification innovations at the Battery Show Europe, including the launch of an advanced new structural battery pack for the low-volume automotive sector.
The company’s new Cell2Pack demonstrator is a cutting-edge structural battery pack system, featuring advances combined to improve electric vehicle structural stiffness, lower weight and improve overall range, at low production volumes.
Cell2Pack
Cell2Pack is a specific battery design for the automotive niche market and low volume applications of under 10,000 vehicles annually. The cells are integrated directly into the battery pack without the need for individual module enclosures, therefore increasing volumetric energy density and improving vehicle range within a given package. To achieve this highly integrated solution, the cells become a load-bearing element and provide a load path directly through the battery pack from base-to-lid, and onwards into the vehicle body.
The Cell2Pack system incorporates advanced technical features to provide an optimum battery design with maximum capability including:
Large Format Cylindrical Cells - market trends show that there’s now a move towards larger format cylindrical 46xx cells offering higher power and energy density, as well as increased fast charging capability due to reduce internal resistance.
Inflatable Side Cooling - Flexible and inflatable side cooling ribbons offer double-sided cooling to the cells. The adaptive flexible shape ensures close contact with the cells without the need for gap fillers or thermal interface material, therefore improving heat transfer from the cells to the coolant. Manufacturing is also simplified with no need to attach the cooling ribbons to the cells.
Bent Extruded Case - One continuous 3D bent extrusion forms three sides of the battery case with a clip fit panel base. This design enables the package length and width to the scaled to the customer requirements without the need for high-cost tooling changes, ideal for low volumes.
WAE formed new alliances in the supply chain to deliver flexibility, and increased capability in supplying such highly integrated systems.
Elysia – Battery Intelligence from WAE
Elysia is a world-leading battery intelligence offering from WAE, bringing the very latest in battery software to the mass automotive and e-mobility market. Drawing on more than a decade of high-performance battery expertise from WAE - which has designed, developed, and manufactured the world’s most advanced batteries for multiple sectors, from global electric motorsport programs to electric hypercars and mining trucks - Elysia brings game-changing insight to the burgeoning global electric vehicle space.
Elysia is the first mass market software offering from WAE, combining a suite of innovations that can unlock the true potential of any battery. It features state-of-the-art embedded and cloud-based products which, together, provide customers – including global automotive OEMs, fleet operators and battery asset financiers – with not only unprecedented access to battery insights, but the ability to manage, optimize and enhance performance across the battery’s entire lifecycle, both in the vehicle and in ‘second life’ applications such as stationary grid storage. The Elysia team will be present throughout the show on the WAE stand.
“With Cell2Pack we have an advanced new structural battery design that has huge positive implications for the low-volume automotive sector, while with our new Elysia battery intelligence offering we are bringing game-changing battery software to the mass market,” says WAE Technologies CEO Craig Wilson.