Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

People are always imagining and looking forward to: what will the cars of the future evolve into?

If there is a standard answer, it must be lighter, faster and smarter.

Take traditional fuel vehicles, for example, whose evolution means lower fuel consumption and emissions. Survey data show that for every 30% weight loss, fuel efficiency can be increased by 20%, and carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced by 20%.

Under the background of carbon neutrality, automobile lightweight is the direction that the major automobile companies are competing to pursue. The arrival of the new energy era further provides the basis for the evolution of automobile intelligence.

On the one hand, the power system of new energy vehicles usually accounts for 30% to 40% of the total vehicle mass, which is significantly higher than that of traditional fuel vehicles.

On the other hand, for new energy vehicles, lightweight means longer mileage, which is an important lifeline for the development of new energy vehicles.

Under the requirements of lightweight, the new energy car track has new rules and methods of play, and a variety of lightweight technologies can step on the stage of the times, deconstruct and interpret themselves.

Compared with traditional car accessories, lidar and other sensors make the car more intelligent, but even if the vehicle has been equipped with more than a dozen sensors, it can not completely solve the security problems in all scenarios.

Quantum sensor is an extremely precise sensor built by quantum mechanism. to understand it simply, compared with traditional sensors, quantum sensors have higher accuracy and stronger sensitivity.

In recent years, with the iteration of technology, the sound wave of commercial application of quantum sensors is getting higher and higher, and quantum sensors begin to appear in the fields of medicine, biology and so on.

Under the background of intelligent development, quantum sensors are also accelerating to the automobile market. The application of quantum sensors in the automotive field can provide cars with "more sensitive response" and "eyes with better eyesight".

Prior to this, authoritative experts in the industry predicted that "quantum sensors will play a more and more important role in the automotive field in the future."

However, the traditional quantum sensor has many components, large volume and weight, so it seems unrealistic to carry it on the car.

In 2019, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created diamond-based quantum sensors on silicon chips, using conventional manufacturing techniques to press large traditional fragments on a square tens of millimeters wide.

After three years of baptism, new developments have been made in diamond quantum sensors.

Recently, researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology reported a detection technology based on diamond quantum sensors, bringing diamond quantum sensors to the field of electric vehicle batteries for the first time.

Generally speaking, electric vehicles monitor the remaining power in the battery by analyzing the current output of the battery, while calculating the remaining mileage, and this process often has an error rate of 10%, resulting in inefficient battery use.

Monitoring technology based on diamond quantum sensors can reduce the error rate to 1%, or even 0.11%.

In other words, under this technology, the mileage of the electric vehicle can be extended by 10%, or the battery weight can be reduced by 10% at the same mileage.

According to researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, diamond sensors can also help monitor temperature and improve battery control.

Solid state lithium metal battery

Source: "Nature"

In the industry, solid-state lithium-metal battery technology is known as "subversive" technology, and even called the future of power batteries.

What is a solid state lithium metal battery?

Different from the traditional lithium batteries used in electric vehicle batteries in the market, on the one hand, solid-state lithium metal batteries use lithium metal to replace graphite and silicon used in traditional batteries in the market, which can achieve higher energy density; on the other hand, using solid electrodes and solid electrolytes to replace liquid or polymer gel electrolytes in lithium-ion batteries can prevent lithium ion leakage and reduce the occurrence of battery short circuit.

To put it simply, compared with traditional lithium-ion batteries on the market, solid-state lithium-metal batteries are smaller, lighter, faster to charge, longer life and safer.

In recent years, whether in academia or capital circles, the pursuit of solid-state lithium metal batteries can be said to be getting crazy. The reason is that it can greatly alleviate the "safety anxiety" and "mileage anxiety" in the development of new energy vehicles, and at the same time, it is more in line with the lightweight trend of the future development of electric vehicles.

However, the technical difficulties that are difficult to overcome for a long time make it difficult for solid-state lithium metal batteries to get out of the laboratory.

In recent years, good news has come one after another.

It is fully charged in 3 minutes, the charging cycle is more than 10,000 times, and the battery life is more than 20 years. Harvard University in the United States has made a new technological breakthrough in the research of solid-state lithium metal battery.

In May last year, Harvard University announced the progress of solid-state lithium metal batteries, but the technology at that time remained at the level of "fully charged within 10-20 minutes and battery life of 10-15 years".

It can be said that the new breakthrough in solid-state lithium-metal battery technology has directly raised the average level of battery technology. if it is really large-scale industrialization, it will become the key to solve the problem of restricting the development of electric vehicles, and further empower the electric vehicle industry.

At present, solid-state lithium metal batteries are accelerating the process of commercial application.

It is understood that startup Adden Energy has announced that it has received an exclusive technology license from the Harvard University Office of Technology Development to promote the commercialization of the technology, with the goal of reducing the battery to a palm-sized "soft bag battery".

According to the 2021-2025 all-solid-state Lithium Battery Industry in-depth Market Research and Investment Strategy recommendation report, it is expected that the first batch of solid-state lithium-metal batteries will enter the market before 2025, and in the next 10 years, solid-state lithium-metal batteries will be the development trend of power batteries for electric vehicles.

Vanadium anode battery

Source: TyFast's official website

At the 2022 World Power Battery Congress, Zeng Qinghong, chairman of GAC GROUP, said, "I am working for the Ningde era", completely revealing the dilemma in the field of automotive power batteries in the public's view.

In recent years, while looking for new suppliers, car companies are sustenance for new "substitutes" in the market.

The new concept of "vanadium anode battery" has also entered people's field of vision this summer.

In June, according to foreign media reports, TyFast announced the development and manufacture of vanadium anode batteries, saying that vanadium anode batteries charge 20 times faster than ordinary lithium-ion batteries, extend their service life by 20 times, achieve full charge within 3 minutes and support 20,000 charging cycles. It is understood that the battery can still provide 80% to 90% of the energy density of the current battery.

First of all, let's understand what is called vanadium anode battery.

Unlike vanadium batteries (all-vanadium redox flow batteries), which sparked a wave of discussion last year, vanadium anode batteries are still lithium-ion batteries.

The charging time of traditional lithium-ion battery is affected by the speed of lithium ion flowing into and out of the anode. the graphite used for the anode has a planar structure and can slide freely between it.

Different from the traditional lithium electronic battery, TyFast uses lithium vanadium oxide (LVO) to make battery anode, which has two advantages compared with graphite.

On the one hand, the transport speed of lithium vanadium oxide (LVO) is 10 times that of graphite, which greatly reduces the charging time. On the other hand, the expansion and contraction of lithium vanadium oxide (LVO) is smaller than that of graphite during charging and discharge, which means that the anode has less mechanical and chemical damage, thus prolonging battery life.

However, vanadium anode battery also has some disadvantages. Compared with graphite, LVO of the same quality contains less ions and is more expensive, about twice as much as graphite anode. However, the research team believes that because LVO has a longer life cycle, it can make up for its high cost.

UCSD nanoengineers and Tyfast co-founders first reported the LVO anode in the journal Nature in 202. at present, the product of vanadium anode battery is still on the plan.

With the iteration of technology, we may be able to meet the market in the near future.

Hybrid discharge technology

Image source: IEEE Spectrum

Under the background of global carbon neutrality, the dominant position of traditional fuel vehicles in the market is gradually shaken by new energy vehicles, and electrification and intelligence continue to reshape the whole automobile industry. However, when a new thing appears, the problems related to it follow.

Traditional fuel vehicles powered by fuel will cause a fire in a collision, so will electric vehicles that rely on high-voltage batteries also be electrocuted after a collision? Before this, there has been a wave of discussion in the industry.

Related research shows that although the probability of occurrence is very small, it is still possible.

In the electric vehicle, the power battery, drive motor, high-voltage distribution box and high-voltage wire harness and other components constitute the vehicle's high-voltage system. Generally speaking, the battery voltage of the electric vehicle is in the range of 336-800V.

In the whole vehicle manufacturing, in order to prevent high-voltage electric shock, the electric vehicle will have a built-in electric shock protection device, and after the collision, the central control system of the vehicle will cut off the corresponding high-voltage circuit, specifically, when the current of the hot line and the zero line of the power supply of the car is not equal, the circuit breaker will immediately trip, separate the battery from other parts, and disconnect the drive motor through the gearbox.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) regulation R94 stipulates that after a collision, the voltage of any vehicle part except the battery itself must be reduced to a safe level (60 V) in less than a minute.

However, in reality, when the car collides, the residual electric energy and mechanical energy stored in the capacitor and motor respectively will maintain the initial current level in the DC bus for more than 5 minutes, which not only violates the high voltage safety requirements, but also increases the possibility of electric shock.

In July, Dr Yihua Hu, an associate professor at the University of York in the UK, and his team proposed a technique that could significantly reduce the chances of this happening, published in the IEEE Journal of Power Electronics.

Dr Yihua Hu and his research team have proposed that fast and safe discharge can be achieved by using internal machine windings to assist external discharge circuits. Simulations and experiments have been carried out on motor systems in the laboratory.

The experimental results show that the combination of the circuit drain and the internal machine winding can safely reduce the voltage of the DC bus to 60 V in as little as 5 seconds.

It is understood that this technology can reduce the size of the internal machine burning group and achieve lightweight and low-cost discharge technology. The team is currently working with Dynex Semiconductor and Lotus Cars to test this technology in the real world.

Carbon ceramic brake disc in the development trend of electrification and intelligence, the advantage of carbon ceramic brake disc is becoming more and more prominent.

Compared with the traditional brake disc made of metal material, the carbon ceramic brake disc is more resistant to high temperature, higher friction performance and more stable, and can reduce the heat and fire accidents caused by friction in the braking system.

The density of carbon ceramic brake disc is lower, and in the case of the same size, the weight of carbon ceramic brake disc is more than half lighter than that of traditional brake disc. Carbon ceramic brake, as a key component for weight loss of electric vehicles, has been highly sought after in the market in recent years.

Carbon ceramic brake pads are more in line with the intelligent development trend, the use of carbon ceramic brake pads can significantly improve the response speed and shorten the braking distance.

Recently, carbon ceramic brake discs have been frequently mentioned in the automobile market. Not long ago, Tianyi Shangjia announced that it has won the development target of an automobile company and is about to enter its specific model carbon ceramic brake disc development and supply process.

In June this year, Jinbo shares became the designated supplier of GAC's EAN carbon ceramic disc, and only a month later, it was appointed by BYD.

In recent years, domestic main engine factories have increased the layout of carbon ceramic brake discs.

In fact, it is not too late for carbon ceramic brake pads to appear on the market. As early as 1999, the carbon ceramic brake pads were unveiled at the International Automobile Fair. In 2021, Tesla announced that it would provide carbon ceramic brake kits for its fastest production Model S Plaid models.

Carbon ceramic brake disc has obvious advantages, but it is difficult to be commercialized on a large scale under the restriction of high cost. previously, carbon ceramic brake pads only appeared on high-end brand models, but now with the iteration of technology, the cost has been reduced. Carbon ceramic brake disc is accelerating to "get on the car".

2023 is considered to be the first year of the scale of carbon ceramic brakes. Statistics from China Merchants Securities show that the domestic market is expected to reach 7.8 billion yuan in 2025 and more than 20 billion in 2030.

The 800 volt charging system "the electric car can be fully charged in the time of a cup of coffee". With the advent of the 800 volt charging system, this vision is slowly becoming a reality.

Under the trend of electrification, it has given birth to a lot of mileage anxiety, and the problem of "difficult to charge" has deterred a lot of consumers from electric vehicles.

How to improve battery life and charging efficiency is extremely urgent.

When the energy density of the power battery is difficult to increase significantly in a short period of time, players begin to rely on increasing the voltage or current of the battery at the same size to achieve "super fast charging". Among them, 800 volt charging system has become one of the important carriers to improve charging efficiency.

At present, 400 volt charging system is widely used in the market, and 800 volt charging system is a relatively new concept.

The so-called 800 volt charging system improves the charging performance of the battery and the running efficiency of the whole vehicle by doubling the voltage and the same current. Under the same battery size, the 800 volt charging system can reduce the charging time by half, thus greatly reducing the size and cost of the battery.

It is understood that using a charger of 800 volts and 350 kilowatts, the charging time of 100 kilometers takes only 5-7 minutes.

The advantage of 800 volt charging system is obvious, but it is not easy to put it into use on a large scale, and it is faced with the difficulty of cost.

When the car is equipped with 800V high voltage architecture, it is often necessary to reselect the battery pack, electric drive, PTC, air conditioning compressor, vehicle charger and so on.

The second is the equipment of related facilities. Most of the charging piles and distribution networks on the market match with the 400 volt charging system. If they are put into use without reconstruction or innovation, it will bring greater risks.

The electrification transformation is huge, and the relevant auto parts suppliers have also increased the layout of the 800 volt charging system.

ZF began mass production of 800 volt power electronics in Central Europe last year, and this year it has increased its investment in the domestic market. In September this year, the 800 volt silicon carbide electric drive bridge was officially offline at the Xiaoshan plant in Hangzhou. Prior to this, Huawei, BergWarner and Huichuan Technology released 800 volt drive systems.

Audi E-tron GT and Porsche Taycan are the first to use 800V charging system in the market.

Domestic car companies are not willing to lag behind, in last year's Guangzhou auto show, BYD e platform 3.0, Geely SEA vast platform have chosen 800V high-voltage architecture.

The "super fast charge" property of 800 volt charging system is undoubtedly a major trend of electric vehicle charging.

CTC technology 2022, standing in the power battery tuyere, Lailai and Sinopec and other enterprises holding flags, swaggering to the road of power exchange technology, another fork in the road, Ningde era, Tesla one after another.

This fork in road is CTC (Cell to Chassis, no battery pack) technology.

Before you understand CTC technology, you need to know about traditional battery packs and CTP batteries.

The internal structure of the traditional battery pack is "core-module-battery package", which is connected in series by using a large number of cables and structures. under this structure, the space in the battery pack is inefficient and the whole power battery is bulky.

In order to improve the utilization efficiency of the battery package, CTP technology arises at the historic moment. CTP technology integrates the core directly into the battery package to form the internal structure of "cell-battery package", so as to improve the space utilization of the battery package. Under CTP technology, the battery charge can be increased by 5% to 10% compared with the traditional battery package. BYD's blade battery is the integration of CTP technology.

CTC technology is considered to be the further integration of CTP technology, the so-called CTC technology is to cancel the PACK design, directly install the cell or module on the car body, and use the body structure as the battery package shell.

Compared with CTP battery, CTC battery is more integrated and can achieve longer mileage at lower cost. It is understood that CTC technology can increase battery power by 5% and 10% on the basis of CTP technology.

CTC is considered to be the key direction of battery technology in the future, and various companies are competing to pursue it.

As early as the 10th Global New Energy vehicle Congress in January last year, Ningde Times revealed that it would formally launch highly integrated CTC battery technology before 2025, and in June of the same year, Tesla announced the CTC plan to the public.

At present, CTC technology has entered the level of commercial application. Zero run C01 is the first to apply self-developed CTC technology, and the Modle Y produced by Tesla in Berlin, Germany, will also use CTC batteries (Tesla called structural batteries).

Unlike capital's enthusiasm for CTC technology, consumers are slightly worried about the development of CTC technology.

On the one hand, in the CTC technology, the cell directly participates in the collision force, which is more prone to safety problems in the absence of module and battery package protection. On the other hand, the integrated and integrated structure of CTC battery is not convenient to disassemble in the later maintenance, which greatly increases the maintenance cost.

Written in the final survey data show that "every reduction in the weight of pure electric vehicles 10kg, mileage can increase 2.5km", in the competitive new energy vehicle market, "weight loss" has become the key proposition of new energy vehicle companies, lightweight technology is undoubtedly the biggest weapon in the new energy vehicles.

Some of the technologies mentioned above are still in the laboratory stage, and some have made great strides to the market, but they may face technical and cost difficulties before they are really mass-produced.

But in the end, "success" or "failure", the market will naturally give the answer.

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