E-Mobility Engineering 016 l Aurora Powertrains eSled dossier l In Conversation: Thomas de Lange l Automated manufacturing focus l Torque sensing insight l Battery Show Europe 2022 report l Sodium batteries insight l User interfaces focus

Breathe Charge, for example, has been applied to Varta’s Easy Blade 48 V lithium-ion battery, which is used primarily in small and medium-sized vehicles such as industrial automated guided vehicles and forklifts. In this battery, Varta said, it reduced charging time by 27%, saving 23 minutes, and enabled 3% more energy to be stored in the cells without affecting service life. Spun out of Imperial College London in 2019, Dr Campbell said the company is building up a portfolio of software functions to get the most out of a battery in all respects. He added that there is a massive amount more to get out of batteries just by understanding them better. “All the automotive OEMs are acknowledging how important intelligent software functions will be for differentiating their brands over the next decade,” he said. Interplex showcased its Cell PLX battery interconnect solution in Stuttgart. Large battery packs can have huge numbers of cells, particularly when the smaller cylindrical types are used, so speeding up the process of connecting them to each other and to the pack’s busbars through automation is important, something that the company has addressed. Each Cell PLX system is custom designed and stamped out of sheet metal. “Our core capabilities are interconnects – we connect power systems together,” Randy Tan explained. “With Cell PLX, we design an interconnect system on top of the array of cells, and can optimise it for whatever is needed in terms of power, current or even thermal distribution, and design it to the customer’s specification.” On display at the show was a 1.5 m-long example designed to connect up to 1000 cylindrical cells in series or parallel and made from a tough aluminium plate. The stamped sheets for Cell PLX systems are usually 0.3 or 0.5 mm thick. An example of the latter is the new Dowsil TC4060 thermal gel for power electronics applications. Paulo Diena noted a growing interest in the use of composite materials and foams in battery pack lids. PU foams have been used for decades between composite layers. “The foam is used to keep the composite skins the right distance apart for the desired mechanical properties in the sandwich structure,” he explained. “We also have a PU fibreglass composite. It weighs a bit more but its stiffness is 10 times higher than with the foam.” Breathe Battery Technologies exhibited its system for optimising the control of battery charging and discharging to safely reduce charging times, improve performance and extend service life. Breathe is a member of a new generation of specialised companies emerging to offer intelligent software for batteries in applications ranging from consumer electronics to EVs. “We work with OEMs and their suppliers to put a small fraction of the total software on their BMS,” Dr Ian Campbell said. “Our software usually influences the charging process and either makes it much faster in the case of our Breathe Charge product or much healthier in the case of our Breathe Life product. “Cycle life is significantly enhanced, capacity retention is better, OEMs face less warranty risk, there’s a better experience for the user from day one to the end of the battery’s life, and the battery is better prepared for its second-life application.” While that might seem to be a key area for battery and vehicle OEMs, Dr Campbell emphasised that Breathe Technology is focused solely on these intelligent software functions. “That means we can put a lot more time, energy and investment into that one specific area to extract the most performance from the battery system,” he said. “We currently have 10 PhDs in the company, and a lot of those are in battery algorithm development.” Breathe Charge and Breathe Life are off-the-shelf products, he said, although there is some preparatory work to do for each customer application. “Companies send us their battery system or cells, we do a little calibration for them, our software team works with theirs on the integration, and the application drops into their existing hardware and software architectures,” Dr Campbell explained. “Our software is a very lightweight battery model that runs in real time on the BMS, and understands what’s happening electrochemically in the cells across the pack, and there’s an algorithm that’s making intelligent control decisions,” he added. “It effectively says, ‘OK, now the charging current should be at this level’ to balance the performance with the health of the battery based on the model and the insight we have into the battery’s health at a given moment. It does this in real time as you are charging the battery and as the battery is ageing as well, so the software always treats it as it needs to be treated.” Winter 2022 | E-Mobility Engineering 53 ShowReport | Battery Show Europe 2022 Jaguar’s I-Type 5 Formula E car makes use of multiple Dow materials under a partnership that showcases the company’s MobilityScience materials expertise platform