AZL Launches Project to Scale Battery Case, Enclosure Designs Beyond Passenger Vehicles

AZL Aachen’s (Germany) latest Joint Partner Project (JPP) “Scaling Composite Battery Casings: From Automotive Cost and Weight Benefits to Commercial Vehicle Applications” investigates how plastic-based design potential can be made economically viable through modular and standardized electric vehicle (EV) enclosure concepts, even at lower production volumes of individual vehicle models.

Current developments show that plastic-based battery case designs can not only contribute to weight reduction, but also enable new approaches to cost reduction, functional integration and improved fire safety. For trucks, buses and off-highway vehicles, however, the starting point differs significantly from the passenger car market. Production volumes per vehicle model are often lower, while requirements vary depending on application, duty cycle, vehicle architecture and manufacturer. At the same time, these segments represent attractive opportunities because battery casings and battery system enclosures can have a substantial impact on manufacturing costs, payload, range, energy consumption and integration effort.

Since 2018, AZL has accompanied and helped shape the development of plastic-based battery casings in the automotive sector through numerous industrial projects. These include large collaborative projects for technology development, JPPs as well as development, production and testing activities using AZL’s own development, production and testing infrastructure. AZL is now transferring this experience to trucks, buses and off-highway vehicles, addressing a relevant growth field for vehicle manufacturers, battery system suppliers, and the plastics and composites value chain.

The latest project focuses on how standardized and modular battery casings and battery system enclosures can be developed for different vehicle types, models and manufacturers. To this end, requirements from different applications will be systematically compared in order to identify commonalities, recurring functional requirements and suitable platform approaches. based on these analyses, modularization approaches will be derived that can help bundle volumes beyond individual vehicle models and make highly automated plastics and composite processes economically viable.

The project investigates three central modularization strategies”
Capacity scaling realizes different battery capacities through varying numbers of standardized enclosure units.
In-mold variants enable variants through adapted material configurations or exchangeable mold elements.
Cross-model combination describes the combination of standardized casing variants for different vehicle models and use profiles.
Together, these approaches are intended to show how modular kit systems contribute to the economic scaling of plastic-based battery casings.

A key advantage of plastic-based designs lies in their potential for functional integration. The term covers a broad range of material and manufacturing concepts, from fiber-reinforced plastics and thermoplastic semi-finished products to combinations of different plastics and plastic semi-finished products as well as hybrid plastic-metal designs. Depending on the concept, functions such as connections, mounting and attachment elements, sealing surfaces, coolant connectors, temperature-control functions and protection against mechanical, thermal and electrical loads can be integrated into the component. This can reduce additional parts, assembly steps, joining elements and interfaces. In combination with modular enclosure concepts, functional integration becomes an important lever for lowering system costs, reducing weight and making industrialization for trucks, buses and off-highway vehicles economically assessable.

The JPP combines the analysis of market, vehicle and safety requirements with concrete modular reference concepts, CAE-based assessment, manufacturing benchmark, regulatory compliance map and industrialization roadmap. It therefore does not focus on isolated casing components, but on the question of under which conditions plastic-based designs can be used as economically viable platform solutions for battery casings and battery system enclosures in commercial vehicle applications. This will consider effects of commonalities and differences between vehicle requirements.