• • • ELECTRIC VEHICLES • • •
Figure 2: No touch, fully automatic manufacturing is a strongly growing trend in the EV industry Manufacturing efficiency
advantages To commit to wBMS technology is to re-imagine how the EV factory is designed. But the merits of going fully wireless from production to product become hard to ignore when all the moving parts – some literally – are considered. It’s been observed that there’s a big difference between almost robotic and fully robotic manufacturing. Put simply, as soon as humans are introduced to the factory floor environment populated with high-speed robotics, significant safeguards must also be put in place to protect them, and this inherently reduces the production efficiency that could otherwise be achieved with full end-to-end automation.
The use of wireless communication throughout the factory floor for wBMS production truly opens the door to touchless, fully robotic EV battery pack manufacturing. In addition to leveraging the benefits of wBMS at the vehicle level, OEMs can further reduce their CAPEX and OPEX by eliminating the need for valuable personnel to spend time manually wiring battery packs to harnesses and/or testing modules and connections (with the ongoing safety training this activity entails).
This aspect of wBMS provides up-and-coming and established OEMS alike the opportunity to bypass legacy wired production in favour of fully wireless, fully robotic manufacturing. In turn, they’re enabled to realise manufacturing efficiencies and flexibility that make the most
20 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING • JUNE 2024
of their limited budgets, keeping them nimble and competitive with deep-pocketed, established players.
By bypassing the need for robotics devoted to the time and cost-intensive tasks of manipulating wired battery pack harnesses, OEMs of all sizes can achieve the full promise of high speed, high efficiency robotic production. Analog Devices has developed wBMS so that automation can be supported at each step of production, making it easier for OEMs to transition to a wBMS enabled factory.
Enhanced scalability and
flexibility across the life cycle With wBMS, OEMs and battery suppliers are liberated to design and produce as many battery pack variants as they like without ever designing a harness. They can leverage a common wBMS platform that’s software configurable for individual vehicle models, at lower overall development costs. This remains the heart of the wBMS value proposition: OEMs gain increased flexibility to scale their EV fleets into volume production across a wide range of vehicle classes to meet evolving consumer demand. In adopting wBMS to underpin its breakthrough Ultium battery platform, GM can scale the platform across its brands and vehicle segments, from work trucks to performance vehicles. More broadly, GM credits wBMS technology for enabling the more widespread electrification of its fleet.
But there’s much more that can be done to lower the carbon footprint of a battery pack over its usable lifetime, while extending the associated revenue potential. This is achieved through a “reduce, repair, and reuse” strategy whereby wBMS can help reduce costly vehicle recalls, streamline repairs, and promote battery re-usage as a preferred alternative to scrapping and recycling. wBMS makes it considerably easier to maintain a stock of spare modules, and they are a lot easier to swap in/out of battery packs during vehicle service. There’s no time loss or frustration associated with tracking and locating inventory, or attempting to remove the battery harness (without breaking it) during a service call. Modules are simply scanned in/out as they migrate through the supply chain, and finally from stock shelf to vehicle, with installation ease that traditional wired BMS could never match. This impacts more than just service at the EV development phase. Pack designers no longer need to spend precious time and space to accommodate how the harness will be removed and replaced, resulting in faster design and more energy dense packs.
wBMS features can also enable batteries to measure and report their own performance, increasing early failure detection and helping avoid costly vehicle recalls, while enabling optimised battery pack assembly. The data can be monitored remotely throughout the battery life cycle - from assembly to warehouse and transport, through installation and maintenance.
electricalengineeringmagazine.co.uk
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