Materials

Deep Insight

Skateboard platforms

Against the backdrop of a boom in skateboard platforms for EV designs, Nick Flaherty looks at the approaches taken by some of their suppliers. Changing the wheelbase of a traditional car or truck design by 6 or 7 in creates a ripple effect whereby half the transmission shaft has to be redesigned, changing the centre of gravity and the requirements for the suspension. That means a whole new vehicle design is needed...

New Products

Lanxess launches hollow-profile hybrid technology

Chemicals company Lanxess is launching a hollow-profile hybrid technology. With it, metallic hollow profiles can be made functional on conventional injection moulding machines using plastic compounds. The result is plastic-metal composite components that have far greater torsional stiffness and strength than could be achieved with previous hollow-profile technologies. Potential applications in the automotive industry include […]

Web exclusive

Freedom from rare earth magnets?

A good alternative to magnets made from rare earth elements such as neodymium, dysprosium and samarium – which are expensive, volatile in price and supply and polluting in their extraction – is something of a holy grail for the electrical industry in general and EVs in particular. Enter Niron Magnetics with its Clean Earth iron […]

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Battery cooling

As liquid-based cooling for EV batteries becomes the technology of choice, Peter Donaldson explains the system options now available. Although there are other options for cooling EV batteries than using a liquid, it is rapidly taking over from forced-air cooling, as energy and power densities increase. It is emerging as the dominant technology...

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Condition monitoring

Peter Donaldson examines the factors involved in keeping tabs on the health and performance of key EV components. While an EV’s most costly component is its battery, there are also many other subsystems – inverters, generators and so on – whose condition is critical to safety and efficiency. Machinery health and usage monitoring is well-established...

PS

Battery reuse and recycling

As awareness grows of the environmental problems associated with several types of lithium mining and extraction, it is becoming obvious that the eco-friendly shine on EVs could soon become tarnished unless those processes are cleaned up and a circular economy for lithium-ion batteries and the materials in them can be established (writes Peter Donaldson). A circular economy means reusing...

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Battery materials

Nick Flaherty reports on how recent advances in materials are leading to EV batteries with ever-growing energy densities. Battery systems for e-mobility platforms are based largely around lithium chemistry. Liquid lithium salts with graphite anodes and composite metal cathodes are the dominant combination for battery cells...

Digest

vRbikes vR3

Rory Jackson looks at how this three-wheeler has been designed to carry as much cargo as possible in the smallest footprint possible. Given that an electric powertrain brings with it lower maintenance times and costs compared with ICE powertrains, so more and more EV developers are looking to ‘right-size’ their vehicles into smaller and more compact architectures, for ease of use and...

Dossier

Elaphe L1500 in-wheel motor

The L1500 has been designed to enable it to be used in a wide range of OEM EVs and HEVs. Rory Jackson reports on how it was developed. Slovenian company Elaphe is known in the e-mobility industry for its in-wheel propulsion technology, which is used in a range of automotive applications around the...

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Magnetics

Making electric motors more efficient means looking beyond the magnetic materials and switching techniques, as Nick Flaherty explains. The development of the first rare earth magnets in the 1960s by scientists at the US Air Force Materials Laboratory introduced a key new capability for e-mobility. Combining yttrium and cobalt in an...