E-Mobility Engineering 015 l EMotive Scarab off-road truck dossier l In Conversation: Giulio Ornella l Hall effect and magnetic sensors focus l Challenge of batteries for heavy-duty EVs l Alpha Motor Corporation digest l Automated charging insight l HVAC systems focus

Future prospects In the pursuit of lower maintenance costs and emissions, battery recycling is likely to be important for future generations of heavy-duty commercial EV fleets. Packs designed with high cycle numbers for their lifetimes are expected to reach 80% of their nominal capacities – a figure widely accepted as their ‘end of life’ in the e-mobility world – between 4 and 10 years after their initial delivery. At this time, Broad notes, “The customer can decide to replace it with a new battery, and the old battery can then be reused in a stationary application, such as for grid services or energy shifting. “The IoT capability of our product means we can perform remote pack diagnostics in real time to decide in advance whether the battery is suitable for a second life. If not, we’ll send it directly for recycling.” Dr Busche comments that Akasol generally agrees with this timeframe. “We anticipate a ramp-up for heavy-duty EV packs starting with medium volumes from 2025, increasing to high volumes in 2030.” In general terms, Akasol sees the recycling process as following several steps. First, all removable parts in an old pack will be dismantled to stockpile a pre- sorted set of materials. Many metal and electronic components in these sets can then be recycled using well-established, conventional techniques. Less well-established is how best to recycle the modules and cells. Broad says. “In our plants in Germany and Switzerland, we already collect partially assembled or final products that didn’t pass our quality tests. “That gives us unique opportunities to experiment with and benchmark different recycling processes. We also consider the location of the recycling facilities, as they will need to be built close to the end-of-life locations of heavy commercial EVs. “The two main differences will be the size and weight of the packs, and the production volumes. These will have an impact on the manufacturing equipment used to produce the packs,” comments John Lewis, eTransport product manager for Leclanche. “We have seen in the past that heavy-duty applications would tend to use larger batteries with higher voltages, but we find that consumer EV batteries are also going in that direction now. “Because the battery packs tend to be larger in heavy-duty applications, the materials handling equipment needs to be adapted to such heavier batteries. And with production volumes lower than in the consumer EV space, the choice of such equipment will also be adapted to the volume requirements.” That means solutions for automated assembly lines might be less applicable in production lines for heavy-duty commercial EV batteries than for consumer EVs, although Webasto has developed a sizeable assembly line for its CV Standard packs that is optimised to produce high-end batteries in lower volumes than in the passenger car space. Lewis also notes that manual skill requirements will remain largely unchanged from one case to the other. These similarities in manufacturing requirements means that keeping assembly lines flexible, scalable and product-independent could be critical for the sustainable growth of production capabilities. Dr Busche comments that at Akasol, “In a highly efficient production environment with a significant level of automation it is always important to have skilled operators who are able to control the lines. With our strategy, to have product-independent assembly lines, the processes and skills are not influenced by the types of products.” Extensive quality control during assembly as well as detailed testing are critical to ensuring packs achieve road safety certifications (Courtesy of Leclanche) Autumn 2022 | E-Mobility Engineering 49 ChallengeOf | Batteries for heavy-duty EVs