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Battery Pack Functional Integration - a Long-term Journey Battery packs are changing to reduce complexity, cost, mass, and vehicle height while improving safety and facilitating rapid charging and driving range. The battery pack is secondary to cell improvements, but as battery cells become more mature pack design becomes more important. It is not efficient to put battery cells in a set of nested boxes. Benchmark designs reduce complexity, reduce cost/mass, and improve manufacturability. Battery pack integration includes structural, electrical, and thermal design. Although cell-to-pack designs have become common and the latest cell-to-body designs have emerged, there are great opportunities to improve battery packs through functional integration. New designs utilize new materials but most importantly will eliminate components. Leading battery pack designs from Tesla, BYD, and CATL may use different cell formats but they share certain design principles and characteristics. One example is materials and components to hold cells in place within a pack which have been, and will continue to be, refined and simplified. Electrical interconnections and sensors continue to become smaller and more tightly integrated with the cell arrays. Best practice thermal designs reduce the number of interfaces between cells and heat sinks to reduce cost/mass and enable higher charging rates. Many approaches to thermal runaway mitigation involve new materials and components but leading designs eliminate such components and expensive materials by combining thermal management runaway function into structural or thermal components. Despite tremendous progress there are still many pathways to further integrate battery pack designs. Functional integration is expected to reduce dedicated materials for flame resistance, insulation, and thermal conductivity. Battery pack covers and floors will have additional integrated functions, further eliminating separate components. Finally, battery packs will continue to be better integrated with the body-in-white thereby reducing structural redundancy, vehicle height, cost and mass. This journey is expected to take 15 years, if it ever ends. Future vehicle architectures and systems are one focus of The ITB Group research. Our assessments help companies plan their vehicle technology investments by examining sources of value, supply chain dynamics, and technology projections. ITB gathers input from throughout the automotive value chain regarding unmet needs and innovations that improve system value. ITB’s industry funded research helps companies understand the choices being made to improve vehicles over the next ten years. ITB will hold its annual conference on battery pack integration in June to dive deeper into pathways for battery pack improvement with a focus on integration. To learn more, click on the link below. https://lnkd.in/edWCfj5K #batteryintegration #EVbattery #EV #EVthermal