Some suppliers of materials for EV battery enclosures Steel & Aluminium Constellium www.constellium.com Hydro www.hydro.com Magna International www.magna.com Novelis www.novelis.com Outokumpu www.outokumpu.com Speira www.speira.com ThyssenKrupp Steel www.thyssenkrupp-steel.com Thermoplastics and composites Celanese www.celanese.com Covestro www.covestro.com Kautex Textron www.kautex.com Mitsubishi Chemical Group www.mitsubishi-chemical.com Nexeo Plastics www.nexeoplastics.com SABIC www.sabic.com SGL Carbon www.sglcarbon.com Solvay www.solvay.com Teijin Automotive www.teijin.com Windform www.windform.com 40 September/October 2025 | E-Mobility Engineering high modulus materials. For example, for the same glass composite material, deep bead stiffeners can reduce the weight of a lid from 14 to 5 kg, while maintaining the same stiffness. High modulus materials will also reduce weight but typically at extra cost. For relatively flat components, such as the lid, a sandwich solution can also be very light but will require a few millimetres extra height, which in turn will reduce the available space for battery modules in a given battery pack design space below the vehicle. The most important conclusion is, however, that there are many opportunities to save both cost and weight at the same time, and even when using various material systems. Sandwich constructions typically result in lighter designs while taking up more space. These yielded typically about 5% less internal space for battery modules. Whether that may be an issue depends on the particular car design, and the magnitude may also vary when considering more detailed requirements regarding thermal insulation, noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) and other issues. An advantage of the sandwich is the better thermal isolation, which may have advantages in battery performance by keeping cell temperatures at a more desired level when the car is parked overnight in winter, but also in fire resistance and heat shielding during a thermal runaway event. Despite the predicted weight and cost advantages for various multimaterial concepts, today’s battery pack structures are predominantly made from aluminium and/or steel. As a first step, OEMs have been replacing the less-complex components, such as the lid and bottom protection plate – parts that don’t affect the battery pack internal design very much. These are low-risk parts during the development phase of the complete battery pack, and it is expected that experience with composite solutions in lids and protection plates will promote further use for more structural parts in future. Conclusion Taking advantage of new geometries enabled by composite materials can be a benefit to designers of e-mobility systems, but this must be supported by a manufacturing systems approach. The design and manufacturing guidelines need to be coupled with a rigorous design review process that can drive zero scrap and zero downtime through close collaboration between the design and manufacturing teams. Collecting real-time machine data prevents breakdowns and enhances uptime. By linking this datalake information with machine learning, product performance specification moves toward predictive part quality. This enables the production process to deliver the optimal battery enclosure. Acknowledgements With thanks to Boris Meisterjahn at Kautex Textron, Sami Al-Osaim at SABIC, Daniel Kern at Novelis and Warden Schijve at AZL, Aachen. Tech focus | Battery pack materials Steel chambers to lighten a battery pack (Image courtesy of ThyssenKrupp)
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