Gigafactory empowers the Aoteneng platform to ensure battery safety in a "multi-pronged manner"

In recent years, the new energy vehicle market has always shown a high-speed growth trend, superimposed on the background of technological upgrading of the industry, making the modularization and platform-based manufacturing of electric vehicles become a new track for various car companies to compete for strength, and SAIC-GM is no exception.

In September this year, SAIC-GM's heavy introduction of the Ultium platform Chinese named Aoteneng Platform. As the cornerstone of GM's full electrification, the Aotene platform combines GM's 26 years of electrification experience and forward-looking technology to bring flexible, intelligent and safe electrification solutions to the Chinese market.

It is reported that SAIC-GM and Pan-Asia Automotive Technical Center participated in the synchronous design and development of the underlying architecture of the Aoteneng platform, and relied on the highly localized business chain system to achieve more than 95% of the local procurement of parts.

According to the plan, based on the Aoteneng platform, by 2025, SAIC-GM will launch more than 10 domestic new energy models, covering multiple market segments such as cars, SUVs and luxury SUVs. In November this year, the LYRIQ, the first pure electric vehicle built on the Aoteneng platform, opened pre-sale and has received orders for more than 5,000 units.

Why has LYRIQ become popular in the market? The high safety performance of the vehicle is one of the important factors that attract consumers to choose LYRIQ. Recently, SAIC-GM showed a number of videos on the safety performance test of the Aoteneng platform battery, and in the three major tests of the needle punch test, the squeeze test and the drop test, the battery of the Aoteneng platform can easily pass the pass.

Multiple guarantees of battery safety

When users talk about electric vehicles, battery safety is one of the topics that cannot be avoided. With the three advantages of "smarter, safer and more performance", the Aoteneng platform is committed to bringing consumers a new electrified driving experience.

In terms of safety, SAIC-GM said: "Adherence to safety is the core principle of the company's development of new energy products, and the Aotene platform meets the high level of ASIL-D system safety, which is a high standard for the safety level of electronic and electrical systems in the automotive industry." ”

As a blockbuster platform introduced by SAIC-GM, Aoteneng was developed in accordance with the design standards for the five-star safety evaluation of four-fold electric vehicles with voltage, electrical energy, physical protection, and insulation resistance at the load end of the power system, which can provide consumers with reliable peace of mind for electric travel.

In terms of battery modules, the Aoteneng platform adopts replaceable and upgradable battery modules, as well as flexible cell solutions, which can support functional upgrades and cell formulation optimization.

What role will the use of the above battery modules play? SAIC-GM said: "Whether it is lithium iron phosphate, ternary lithium batteries, or lithium metal batteries and solid-state batteries that may be applied in the future, they can be used for them." In addition, through the modular design of batteries and electric drives, the Aoteneng platform will meet the needs of consumers in different market segments in a variety of drive forms. ”

In the development and testing of batteries, the Aotene platform strictly follows GM's global new energy vehicle standards. Recently, SAIC-GM's Aotene platform battery has passed the three major tests of needle prick test, squeeze test and drop test at a high level, showing its excellent strength to the outside world.

What are the guarantee factors behind the battery safety of the Aoteneng platform? The all-round thermal diffusion protection design is one of them. Aoteneng platform batteries have exclusive cell formulations for the Chinese market, which can increase the thermal stability of the cells by 10% by using nano-scale coating and directional doping of transition metal atoms at the positive electrode.

In November this year, the first pure electric vehicle LYRIQ built on the Aoteneng platform, its exclusive battery core is SAIC-GM and local suppliers, based on the 811 ternary lithium battery core of the basic formula further optimized, for the Aoteneng platform to jointly develop an optimized formula suitable for the Chinese market. LYRIQ's batteries have undergone more than 3.2 million hours of cumulative testing and have good thermal stability.

In addition to the exclusive battery, the Aoteneng platform battery also has multi-level thermal protection means, and has built a real-time intelligent monitoring system, a cell spacing hot wall, a proprietary technical design to suppress heat diffusion, an anti-tension arc design, a rear large-area explosion-proof valve, passenger compartment protection, and a module-integrated liquid cooling system.

Specifically, the "real-time intelligent monitoring system" can achieve triple sensor 7×24h uninterrupted, high-frequency monitoring; "cell spacing hot wall" uses a new generation of insulating material aerogel, which can effectively reduce the temperature transfer between cells; "anti-heat diffusion proprietary technology design" is composed of proprietary technology safety valve and fast exhaust channel design, both of which can inhibit the secondary impact of the thermal runaway battery cell on the surrounding area.

"Anti-tension arc design" refers to the high-voltage components can prevent arc pulling after the battery heat is out of control; "rear large-area explosion-proof valve" can quickly discharge high-temperature gas and cool the whole package; "passenger compartment protection" refers to the built-in aerogel fire blanket on the battery pack; "module integrated liquid cooling system" is equipped with an integrated independent liquid cold plate at the bottom of the module, which can improve the heat exchange effect by about 10%.

In fact, in addition to the all-round thermal diffusion protection design, the new battery physical protection architecture enhanced by the Aoteneng platform is also an important guarantee factor for battery safety. The new battery physical protection architecture includes a new generation of high-strength battery housing, and a safer battery safety architecture combined with the whole vehicle.

Aoteneng Gigafactory empowerment

The excellent battery test results of the Aoteneng platform are inseparable from the active empowerment of SAIC-GM Aoteneng Gigafactory. Time back to October this year, Aoteneng Super Factory was officially put into operation in Jinqiao, Pudong New Area, Shanghai.

As one of the important projects of SAIC-GM's 50 billion yuan investment in the field of electrification and intelligent networking new technologies, Aoteneng Super Factory was upgraded from the former SAIC-GM Power Battery System Development Center, with the production and testing capabilities of power battery systems, and the planned product line covers a full range of new energy vehicle battery systems such as light hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and pure electric.

SAIC-GM said: "Aoteneng Gigafactory adopts the world's leading assembly process, technical standards and quality control management consistent with GM North America, combined with high-precision, full-life cycle data traceability intelligent manufacturing technology, to provide a strong guarantee for the high-quality production of Aoteneng battery systems." ”

The battery management system of the Aoteneng electric vehicle platform takes the lead in using wireless communication technology, which reduces the wiring harness of the battery pack by 90%, which not only improves the utilization rate of the battery pack space, but also brings many benefits to the safety and reliability of the whole package, and can also greatly improve the detection efficiency on the production line.

Not only that, Aoteneng Gigafactory is also the first in the world to use wireless communication technology to test battery performance, so as to avoid part damage caused by the insertion and removal of traditional battery test connectors, and improve assembly quality and production line efficiency.

At the same time, Aoteneng Super Factory can also simulate the real operating conditions of the battery pack on the whole vehicle for electrical performance testing, temperature rise, current, voltage data acquisition and judgment, the content of the measurement point is as high as 3,000, to ensure the high safety of the battery pack and the consistency of performance. In addition, the entire test discharge process is energy recovered, feeding excess energy back to the grid, reducing energy losses during production.

In addition to reliable performance testing, the battery system production line of Aoteneng electric vehicle platform controls product quality from the parts. It is reported that the workshop starts from the parts, using high-precision compressed gauges to conduct air tightness testing of incoming materials, processes and assemblies, and the results can be traced back to the whole life cycle, and the battery package airtightness test limit is very strict.

It is worth mentioning that the conventional tightness test method is time-consuming and susceptible to environmental influences, so Aoteneng Gigafactory can quickly, efficiently and accurately obtain test results and ensure the quality of product delivery by performing statistical analysis on existing leak test curve data and using machine learning methods to establish predictive algorithm models.

"The automation and high-precision intelligent assembly process ensure that the Aoteneng battery pack can achieve the sealing level of THE whole package of IP67 dustproof and waterproof and IP6K9K high-pressure water spray protection, which further improves the product quality." SAIC-GM said.

It is reported that the gluing, closure and other processes of battery production of Aoteneng Super Factory are all automatically completed by robots based on digital twin technology. The above equipment processing scheme in the early stage of design, will be for the trajectory, speed, glue volume and other process parameters for hundreds of virtual simulation, production of the simulation after the operation of the optimal program output to the field equipment, and with 3D visual means for multiple quality assurance, the whole system to achieve measurement accuracy of less than 0.1mm, the measurement accuracy is about the diameter of a human hair.

In the assembly of the battery pack, Aoteneng Super Factory adopts ultrasonic positioning and tightening technology to accurately locate the position of the tightening bolt through the ultrasonic generator and receiver to ensure the bolt tightening sequence and tightening quality. During the tightening process, the tightening torque and angle are monitored, and the tightening information is uploaded to the IT system, so that the data of each battery assembly link can be traced and queried.

"An Aoteneng battery system needs to pass 4 leak tests, 2 electrical performance tests, 4 IT system comparison tests, and more than 100 vision systems and sensors. Only by meeting all of the industry-leading and stringent standards can we finally qualify the production line, ensuring the overall delivery quality of the product. SAIC-GM said.