In recent years, the automotive industry is in the inflection point of transformation and change, automotive technology is not exaggerated to describe by leaps and bounds, many car owners find that it seems that a new car just bought is outdated in a short time, this sentence is particularly obvious on electric vehicles. So in order to be at the forefront of the times and be a forward-looking car buyer, we must understand what new technologies are going to be mass-produced this year. In this series, I will divide it into two parts, of which the first part introduces the new technology of independent brands, and the next part will introduce the new technology of overseas brands.
First, Toyota steering by wire
The first new model, the bZ4X, under Toyota's all-electric architecture e-TNGA, was unveiled last year, and the car has a new technology that deserves special attention - steer-by-wire.
This technology is said to be new, but it is not entirely new, because Infiniti also mass-produced it in that year, but the products produced at that time were relatively defective and did not get too much attention. This time by Toyota, it seems that reliability and practicality are more worth looking forward to. Steer-by-wire technology is to cancel the steering column in our traditional steering system, connect the steering wheel and the steering gear through the signal line, and the signal of the driver's steering will be transmitted to the steering machine through the signal line, so as to complete the steering work.
Since the steering wheel is not hard connected to the road surface, vibrations from the road surface can be completely isolated from the steering wheel. However, if there is no force feedback at all, there will be less driving communication, so in order to simulate the road sense and force feedback on the steering wheel, under the steering wheel, the steering system by wire needs to add a high-power force feedback motor compared to the ordinary steering system.
This means that the new car equipped with this steer-by-wire control has more room for adjustment, and it also needs more complex technical means, which can make the driver get a very comfortable driving experience. At the same time, steer-by-wire can also better adapt to assisted driving and future autonomous driving, which is a technology of the future trend.
But at present, because this switch-by-wire steering is still a very new technology from the perspective of mass production, we still need to experience and verify how Toyota's new car is experienced in actual use and how reliable it is.
Second, Cadillac wireless BMS
To say that the electrification of international car companies, GM can not start late, but in terms of the current competitive landscape, GM seems to be "not fast", but GM's new electric vehicles still have black technology worth looking forward to, the most worth mentioning is wireless battery management technology (wBMS).
All of our new energy electric vehicle batteries need to be equipped with a battery management system, which is used to monitor the health of the battery, manage the state of charge and discharge, battery temperature, etc. Battery management system in the current electric vehicles are through a variety of wiring harnesses and battery module links, but these wires not only increase the counterweight, the harness layout also brings problems to the battery pack, in the future use, the protection layer aging out of the problem will also bring certain safety risks to the battery pack, in the short term, the use of a large number of wires also brings cost improvement to the battery pack.
In the general pure electric platform Ultium Aoteneng, we will see the communication between the battery management system and the battery module using wireless communication, that is, like our mobile phone from wired charging to wireless charging, this technology is used in the battery management system, can make the battery pack as a whole reduce the wiring harness by 90%, not only to avoid the vibration process connector loose or short circuit possibility, but also in the system expandability is optimized, the future replacement of the module is easier, the battery system installation and maintenance is more convenient.
In this wireless connection, the general use of Wi-Fi technology, although it sounds very simple, but from the perspective of safety rating, Ultium Aotene platform in the ISO26262 functional safety standard evaluation belongs to ASIL-D, that is, the highest level of security rating, so from the data point of view, we have not found a place to pick faults. This technology will first be used in Cadillac's first electric vehicle, the LYRIQ. It is understood that the technology provider comes from the American technology company Visteon.
Third, Tesla 4680 battery
Two years ago Tesla released a brand new 4680 cylindrical battery, which is completely different from the traditional cylindrical batteries 18650 and 21700 batteries, the most obvious difference is that the new battery is 5.48 times larger than the 21700 in its entire volume.
Under the influence of the increase in battery size, the energy of the new battery is increased by 5 times compared with the 21700 battery, and with the blessing of the new assembly and battery pack design, the 4680 battery saves about 86% of the cost in total. At the same time, the energy management system is also better managed because of the reduction in the number of single batteries, so that the larger single battery design is more in line with the needs of power batteries than 18650 and 21700. Most importantly, according to Tesla, the subsequent air energy of the 4680 battery installed car increased by 16%.
It can be said that Tesla equipped with new batteries has been improved in terms of endurance, cost control and safety. Tesla official introduction, 4680 battery is expected to be installed at the end of 2021, but 2021 has passed nearly a month, we have not yet seen the new battery loading information, there is news that this battery will not "grunt" in 2022 anyway.
The most critical technology of this battery lies in the "electrodeless ear" design, which is also the most important technology for the new battery to achieve volume increase.
First of all, we must know that the size of the 4680 battery is much larger than that of the 21700, and the size improvement is also the key technology for the performance improvement of the single cell. So why is it so difficult to just make a traditional cylindrical battery? Mainly because when the battery is charged and discharged, the electrons need to be exported to the outer circuit through the polar ear, and the electrons are easy to cause heat generation due to the existence of internal resistance when passing through the polar ear, and when the battery volume is larger, the longer the distance of the electrons in the collector to the polar ear, the greater the internal resistance generated, and the temperature will increase, resulting in a decrease in battery stability. Therefore, to make the battery size larger, we must solve this heat problem.
The 4680 battery optimizes the problem of heat generation after the battery volume becomes larger through the electrodeless ear technology. Electrodeless ear battery is actually not to remove the polar ear, but the appearance can not see the traditional polar ear, 4680 battery is to make the ordinary battery a small point of the polar ear to do larger, so that the entire surface is "polar ear" design, commonly known as "full polar ear", this design can make the electron move more freely, reduce the movement path of the electron, but also reduce the electron aggregation in a small area, so that the internal resistance is reduced, thereby improving the thermal stability of the battery.
Although at present we do not know how many kilometers of battery life can be improved by the new battery, but the improvement is beyond doubt, and the reduction in the cost of the new battery may also bring certain changes to the price of the new car, but whether there is a price reduction depends on the planning of the car company.
summary:
This year's joint ventures and new technologies of imported brands do not seem like many, but these three technologies are relatively subversive technologies, which are of great significance for the development of electrification and automatic driving in the future. But because it is also a new technology, there are relatively large tests for its reliability, realization rate, production capacity, etc., and then we may wish to see how the market feedback is.