As Volvo goes electrical, right here’s the way it’s making its batteries top-notch

• Volvo HQ in Gothenburg, Sweden.

  Jonathan Gitlin

• The XC40 is not the first battery EV in the company's history, and as luck would have it, one of the few C30 Electrics was out in the rain.

  Jonathan Gitlin

• This is the drive train of the XC40 Recharge, the new electric Volvo. If it is orange, it means high voltage.

• A look under the hood of the XC40 Recharge.

• The reason why there is no large cargo space under the hood should be obvious when you see this picture. The orange stuff above is the inverter and control electronics. There is a new crash structure underneath, and the electric motor is almost visible underneath.

  Jonathan Gitlin

• A section of the frame of the battery.

  Jonathan Gitlin

• Some test vehicles are charging behind the back of Volvo's new battery laboratory.

  Jonathan Gitlin

• Ulrik Persson, Head of Traction Battery Development at Volvo, gives us a short lecture on how to make good batteries.

• Persson's laboratory contains dozens of these test chambers. Some of them will run for over a year for durability tests.

• A Volvo engineer shows us in one of the test chambers.

• The cells are connected to both cooling power supplies and electrically so that they can be charged and discharged again and again.

• A close-up of a prismatic cell in a test chamber.

• Temperature is the biggest determinant of how long a battery lasts, but also how well it works.

• Some of the chambers are large enough for complete batteries.

• A close-up of the battery in the chamber.

• Volvo also needs to create sounds for electric cars to meet regulations in the U.S. and elsewhere. Here is the anechoic chamber in which the company does it.

Electric cars are becoming increasingly important for automakers, and that means these companies need to learn how to use batteries well. That was branded in Tesla from day one, but batteries have to become a new core competence for existing automakers. Volvo recently opened its doors in Gothenburg, Sweden, to show us how to do this before the new battery EV, the XC40 Recharge, hits the market later this year.

Volvo was an early proponent of electric propulsion and announced a plan for its range of models shortly after it became known that the development of diesel engines would cease. According to this plan, 50 percent of its sales should be BEVs by 2025. However, the actual implementation of this plan is more than just a press conference and a transformation that affects the entire company. Engineers are being retrained to work with electric motors instead of internal combustion engines. Delivery lines and purchasing have to deal with the responsible procurement of a new range of materials. The carmaker even has to think about how its new electric vehicles should sound.

Volvo's have to be safe

Volvo has built its reputation on safety, and of course switching to electric drives shouldn't jeopardize this.

"You may think that it is an advantage to have something smaller like an electric motor compared to an internal combustion engine at the front (on the vehicle). But the way we design for frontal accidents takes into account the accidents in the real world, in where you are at angles, different speeds, different offsets, the engine itself is part of the load sharing system, "said Thomas Broberg, one of Volvo’s leading technical safety advisors.

So don't expect a voluminous Tesla-style cargo block between the front wheels of an electric XC40. While there is storage space under the hood, underneath (and under the converter and the control electronics for the front engine) there is a large steel crash structure that designs the frontal impact loads in the same way that Volvo's internal combustion engines are distributed away from the vehicle occupants, to do.

Like almost every electric vehicle since General Motors' AUTOnomy concept from 2002, the battery is located between the front and rear axles and contributes significantly to the vehicle's structural rigidity and crash-resistance. You don't envy the engineers because the pack has to meet two potentially competing requirements. Obviously, a collision cannot compromise the integrity of the package itself, as lithium-ion cells do not respond well to short circuits. But you also can't design an indestructible package if you don't want the occupants to absorb all the kinetic energy of an accident instead.

It builds its own batteries

However, Volvo's electrification doesn't start on day one with the XC40 Recharge. There was a very short-lived electric version of the tiny C30 hatchback, and of course there were plug-in hybrid versions of its larger 90 and 60 series vehicles since the scalable product architecture was first introduced in 2015 with the XC90 SUV The old BEV and even the newer ones PHEVs required all batteries purchased. From the XC40, Volvo decided to run the production of batteries on its own.

"So far we have bought complete battery systems," said Ulrik Persson, who leads the development of traction batteries at Volvo. For the current PHEVs, this supplier was LG Chem, who designed the batteries in accordance with the automaker's requirements. "Starting with the BEV, it's a very different ball game," said Perrson. "Of course, it is also possible to outsource this by working very closely with the supplier, but on our part, we considered it a strategic decision to take ownership of this new component. It is definitely the most expensive component in the vehicle and so on . " It is an integral part of the crash structure of the vehicle and really makes sense. "

This means that there are no common components or cells between the 10.4 kWh package in a Volvo PHEV and the 78 kWh package that powers the XC40 Recharge (as well as the Polestar 2). For European and US XC40, these packs will use LG Chem pouch cells, but BEVs bound in China will contain prismatic cells courtesy of CATL.

Enlarge /. On the left is a module made of lithium-ion pouch cells. In the middle, the blue thing is a prismatic lithium-ion cell, and on the right is a single pouch cell that lies flat.

Volvo

The rapid pace of technology development has led to changes in procurement. "You want a car to be constantly updated, especially with your software part and even with the hardware. You want this to be more flexible," said Martina Buchhauser, Head of Procurement at Volvo. "We have no more 10-year contracts. It is a maximum of three years and then we see how we can procure and refresh resources," Buchhauser told Ars. One of the tasks of her team is to make sure that The company's commitment to reducing CO2 extends across the entire Volvo supply chain and to ensure that raw materials such as cobalt are mined responsibly and without child labor. "We made it very clear to our suppliers that this is part of our procurement process and part of our business, as important as technology, costs and quality," she said.

Testing cells for up to two years

The rapid pace of development also applies to software – just see how many kilometers Tesla can get out of a kilowatt hour today compared to a few years ago. Persson confirmed that Volvo will use the same approach to collect real data and introduce improvements through wireless updates. Long before this phase, his team was conducting extensive battery technology testing at the plant, using Volvo's new $ 60 million internal battery testing laboratory.

"You might ask if this investment is really necessary – can't you just go out and buy the service?" Persson told us. "But if you look at the market, all the laboratories in Europe are full – there is no capacity. And when you start testing (batteries) at this level, it is quite complex and we want to have it internally. We want to gain the knowledge from it – within our team. "

"The trick with car batteries is that they have to last for the life of the vehicle. It's a pretty difficult task, and to do this we really need to focus on durability tests, and they start at cell-level cells in different temperatures, different currents , different types of cycles, "Persson said. Much of this testing takes place in large temperature controlled chambers where Persson engineers can run tests that can take months or even years. The lithium-ion cells are repeatedly charged and discharged to mimic life on the street in different environments.

"The challenge is really that we are offered improved chemistry every second or third year," said Persson, either for cheaper cells or those with better energy density. "So you have to repeat the tests over and over, and some of the tests take up to two years. The really long durability test is an accelerated test that simulates 10 to 15 years." In addition to testing cells, the Persson Group must also perform similar tests on entire batteries.

"You have your cells in modules and the modules are on the cooling system," Persson said. "You connect the modules to copper or aluminum busbars, and then you have the software control system with slaves. So you monitor every single cell. You have a high-voltage isolation unit so you have relays to open or close the circuit, and You have your fuses, so if we are at the system level, cooling is of great interest again to understand the heat distribution in the package early on Delta is between the temperatures in different cells, the better the design, then it's easier to control and achieve the right durability, "he explained.

Listing image from Volvo