Littelfuse has developed a reference design for a 2 MW bidirectional fast charger for commercial vehicles (writes Nick Flaherty).
Rather than using MOSFETs, the 12-pulse thyristor stack can support a 2 MW output in a smaller volume with just forced-air cooling.
Five 70 kW modules using thyristors that are stacked to provide 350 kW occupy 0.175m³, excluding any pumps and radiators needed for cooling the circuit. For a dual 350 kW charger, the minimum space consumed is a cube with 1.5 m sides and a volume of 3.4m³. More…
Category: E-Mobility Engineering
The Battery Show announces keynotes Albemarle and PowerCo
The Battery Show North America reveals Eric Norris, President of the Lithium Global Business Unit at Albemarle and Sebastian Wolf, Chief Operating Officer of PowerCo, as keynotes for the annual show to focus discussion on generating sustainable battery lifecycles. More…
Webasto’s Next Generation Coolant Heater
Smaller, lighter, more sustainable: The Next Generation Coolant Heater sets new standards for electric high-voltage heaters in terms of installation space and weight.
For system requirements that demand particularly high heating performance requirements, Webasto’s high-voltage heaters (HVH) deliver an ideal solution: More…
Staubli unveils CharIN-compliant megawatt charging system
Staubli has launched its Megawatt Charging System (MCS), which allows electric commercial vehicles with to be charged at up to 4.5 MW. It has been developed in collaboration with the Charging Interface Initiative (CharIN) and in accordance with its specifications.
The system delivers up to 3000 A and 1500 V. More…
Rolls-Royce Spirit of Innovation
Peter Donaldson examines the design and technology that went into making this electric aircraft a record-breaker.
Electric aviation is roughly where piston-powered flight was in the 1920s and ’30s, in that record-breaking really matters to the credibility of the idea almost as much as to the impetus it gives to the development of electric aircraft technology. More…
BMS measures cells in real time
Rather than using algorithms that model the expected performance of battery cells, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measures the current from each individual cell using random pulses to avoid overheating the cell. More…
Silver Power Systems and partners develop ‘world’s most advanced’ battery digital twin
An established concept in other areas of industry, a digital twin is a high-fidelity software model of a real system to which it is linked in as close to real time as possible.
With that goal in mind, EV battery analytics specialist Silver Power Systems (SPS) has partnered with Imperial College London and vehicle manufacturers London EV Company (LEVC) and JSCA (the r&d division of the Watt Electric Vehicle Company) on the recently completed Real-Time Electrical Digital Twin Operating Platform (REDTOP) project.
REDTOP has resulted in what is said to be the world’s most advanced battery digital twin, one that can predict battery lifetime.
SPS’ programme manager Liam Mifsud says, “To really understand a battery’s state of health and predict its future performance you need to know its history, how it has been charged and discharged and so on.” More…
Lunaz Design unveils world’s rarest upcycled EV
Lunaz Design has unveiled what it says is the rarest classic car ever to be transformed to fully electric power. Its 1961 Bentley S2 Continental is one of only four examples built. In its original specification, it was powered by a 6.2 litre V8 IC engine, but it is now equipped with Lunaz’s in-house and […] More…
The Battery Show North America returns to Novi
The Battery Show is returning to the Suburban Collection Showcase in Novi, Michigan on Sept. 11-14 with more than 775 exhibitors and over 72 hours of education available across the three-day expo. More…
Chroma ATE unveils integrated HIL test bed for battery EVs
Chroma ATE has launched the 8610 battery pack power HIL test bed for testing battery systems and components of new energy vehicles, including the battery module, BMS and cooling/heating system. Various hardware options are available for integration, such as a DC power supply, battery charge-discharge system, digital meter, hi-pot tester, and short-circuit and overvoltage protection devices. More…
Zeiss unveils NDT system for battery and EV builders
Zeiss Industrial Quality Solutions has launched its VoluMax 9 titan system for computed tomography (CT) analysis of battery cells and EVs. CT is a non-destructive means of checking that the various steps in the production processes are working as intended, so that sub-components are handled and assembled without errors or damage. More…
Lithium iron phosphate batteries
Developments in LFP technology are making it a serious rival to lithium-ion for e-mobility, as Nick Flaherty explains Lithium-ion batteries have some disadvantages for e-mobility that cannot be ignored, such as lower safety and higher cost than other chemistries. At the same time, improvements in battery pack technology in recent years have seen the energy density of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) packs increase to the point where they have become viable for all kinds of e-mobility applications from vehicles to new types of shipping such as so-called battery tankers. More…
Calcium shows promise for cells
Researchers in Japan have developed a promising rechargeable calcium metal battery with a long lifetime (writes Nick Flaherty). The prototype is capable of 500 cycles of repeated charging-discharging.
As the fifth most abundant element in Earth’s crust, calcium is widely available and inexpensive, and has a higher energy density potential than lithium. More…
Stellantis and Saft unveil storage battery for EVs and stationary power
A team comprising CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research), Stellantis and Saft have unveiled a prototype of an energy storage battery that integrates the inverter and charger functions to create a battery that enhances the range of BEVs. More…
Bentley unveils recreation of the Blower by The Little Car Company
Bentley Motors and The Little Car Company has unveiled a road-legal, 85 per cent scale recreation of the most famous Bentley in the world. ‘Blower Jnr’, a recreation of the 1929 4½-litre Supercharged Team Car No. 2 in Bentley’s Heritage Collection, is the first road-legal car from The Little Car Company and the most sophisticated city car ever built. More…
CATL launches superfast charging battery
CATL launched Shenxing, the world’s first 4C superfast charging LFP battery, capable of delivering 400 km of driving range with a 10-minute charge as well as a range of over 700 km on a single full charge. Shenxing is expected to considerably alleviate fast charging anxiety for EV users, and opens up an era of EV superfast charging. More…
magniX magni350, 650 and magniDrive 100
Rory Jackson looks at how these electric powertrains and their inverter have been designed for crewed aircraft integrators
In every part of aerospace engineering, a race is on to break new ground and claim headline-grabbing milestones in sustainable aviation. While it might seem to some that commercial airliners are moving at a sluggish pace compared with the automotive world in reducing their harmful emissions, it is not out of a lack of interest in decarbonisation. More…
Tool chain for ZEVonUDS standard
Vector Informatik has developed a tool chain for the emerging ZEVonUDS standard for onboard diagnostics (OBD) in EVs (writes Nick Flaherty). More…
Tecman unveils high-volume anti-thermal propagation pad process
Materials engineering firm Tecman says it has developed a process that for the first time enables high-volume continuous manufacture of framed Anti-Thermal Propagation (ATP) pads.
ATP pads are a type of cell barrier that incorporate a physical built-in spacer that surrounds the insulation pad. More…
ViscoTec announces flow monitor for analysing process-related viscosity pressures
In the future, users who operate a stand-alone dispenser can monitor and evaluate their pressures in the dosing process. This is made possible by the flowplus-MONITOR QC analysis unit, which can be used flexibly thanks to its two channels… More…
