Hyundai and Kia are aiming to reinforce packaging effectivity by merging battery-pack circumstances with car structural parts.
A patent filed on October 26, 2023, and revealed by the USA Patent and Trademark Workplace on November 14, 2024, reveals that the automakers are contemplating using the car’s flooring because the higher panel of a battery pack case. This progressive method may optimize out there house, doubtlessly permitting for the set up of extra modules.
The proposed design would combine the battery pack extra carefully with the car’s construction. Key parts, equivalent to aspect sills and cross members, would connect to the ground panel, which additionally serves because the higher part of the battery case. Some cross members is perhaps built-in with the ground panel utilizing an extrusion fabrication methodology.
Based on the submitting, battery modules could be located beneath the ground, doubtlessly occupying voids that aren’t crammed by cross members. Entrance and rear limitations would shield the battery pack and be built-in with the aspect sills.
Different corporations have been exploring comparable ideas of structural battery packs. Tesla offered its personal design throughout its 2020 Battery Day, highlighting potential advantages, together with a ten% discount in mass, a attainable 14% enhance in vary, and a lower of 370 elements by incorporating battery cells right into a honeycomb construction hooked up to the car flooring.
Startup Canoo has additionally included structural batteries in its distinctive skateboard platform design whereas managing to maintain modules, claiming a weight discount of 90 kilos. Moreover, final 12 months, Chinese language startup Neta Auto introduced that it was collaborating with battery provider CATL to get rid of conventional battery packs by integrating cells straight into the car chassis, advancing CATL’s cell-to-pack know-how.
Researchers have additionally investigated the opportunity of utilizing physique panels as batteries, though it appears that evidently numerous structural battery pack ideas at the moment are nearer to being realized in manufacturing.
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