- VW’s unified EV cell format brings cell-to-pack battery design
- Cuts prices, units stage for cell-to-body and simplified EVs
- Means EVs with extra vary and power density, maybe decrease weight
- LFP and NMC chemistries on the identical format, perhaps solid-state, sodium-ion
Volkswagen’s imaginative and prescient of the place it could be by the tip of the last decade with electrical autos has developed lately. However simplification is the key phrase, and its plans to give attention to a single EV battery cell format go proper together with that.
This week, in a know-how replace held simply earlier than the corporate’s Volkswagen Group Annual Convention, the worldwide automaker and its battery-making PowerCo startup shared a better take a look at how these unified cells shall be packaged in upcoming EVs from VW, Audi, Cupra, and several other of its different manufacturers, within the close to future.
As these unified cells arrive—quickly, however on a timeline not but detailed, particularly for U.S.-market EVs—they’ll convey a new battery pack format, packaging the cells instantly into the pack. This enables extra power density, in addition to a lighter pack, stated VW officers, and the method permits VW to be extra versatile with variations for various fashions and markets.
Present MEB battery pack format
VW EVs set to maneuver on from modules
As we speak’s electrical autos constructed on VW’s MEB EV basis, together with the ID.4 and ID.Buzz, incorporate shoebox-sized modules of pouch cells; these are then built-in into the battery case (above). However as VW outlined this week, the next-generation battery arriving as quickly as late this yr for Europe could have the cells instantly mounted into the battery housing—basically in 4 rows spanning longitudinally alongside the battery case within the instance proven (footage of the demonstration case weren’t allowed).
The battery pack case evolves considerably to accommodate the cell-to-pack format, with the mechanical ribs that act as attachment factors for the modules diminished whereas reinforcements have been added elsewhere.
Battery pack format with cell-to-pack
Present MEB battery pack format with module-to-pack
Cooling has been utterly reworked for the brand new cell kind and association. The flat faces of the cells enable simpler temperature management, and the housing on the skin has been utterly reworked—with probably the most noteworthy change showing to be a sample of slender cooling channels over a prime plate. It’s not not like the cooling method for use in Honda’s 0 Sequence EVs (though these could have modules).
On the cell degree VW won’t solely monitor cell voltage but additionally temperature. The battery administration system stays of the wired (vs. wi-fi) kind.
2025 Volkswagen ID.Buzz
Probably extra vary in MEB fashions—like ID.Buzz?
Officers additionally stated that there’s potential for longer packs with “approach larger power content material” versus the present capability—maxed out at 91 kwh (or 86 kwh usable) with the pack within the Euro-market ID.7 and U.S.-market ID.Buzz, presently the 2 longest MEB autos.
Inexperienced Automobile Stories reads that as a fairly robust suggestion the Buzz may acquire extra vary throughout the subsequent few mannequin years, because it merely wants it in an effort to match its road-trip mantra—though VW officers wouldn’t say a lot.
Though Volkswagen confirmed the battery technique as on the best way for its ID.2 and ID.1 EVs arriving in Europe over the following couple years, it prompt that the non-extended-length demonstrator we noticed in contrast roughly to the 82-kwh (77-kwh usable) pack in right this moment’s ID.4.
Officers emphasised that actual figures for battery capability, power density, weight, and extra shall be launched on the IAA Mobility 2025 auto present, set to be held in September in Munich. As proven, the preliminary pack is 400-volt, however extra particulars about that and charging are additionally forthcoming at IAA.
2024 Volkswagen ID.4
On the core: EV cost-cutting
As for these cells themselves, they’re a key piece in VW making a transfer to decrease cell prices and allow extra reasonably priced EVs.
“The unified cell format constructed in line with our personal international and uniform know-how normal would be the foundation for enormous economies of scale in cell and battery techniques,” stated Michael Steiner, head of analysis and improvement for the Volkswagen Group, on the occasion.
Steiner stated that EV batteries nonetheless account for greater than a 3rd of EV price—so the cells characterize competitiveness not simply on price however on efficiency versus car weight.
Improvement of the unified cell format was accomplished at VW’s Heart of Excellence for Battery Cells in Salzgitter, Germany. The power oversees battery methods, improvement, and buying, and it has a duty for almost all elements of battery know-how.
The unified cell format goals to scale back the complexity of battery techniques and cells, and that additionally goes to optimize battery prices and allow decrease entry costs for quantity segments of the market. It’s additionally a part of an effort to coordinate the know-how wants for China, Europe, and North America.
VW Energy Day – battery sorts
Versatile chemistry, from LFP to sodium-ion to solid-state
It additionally permits the adoption of a number of chemistries with the identical cell format, permitting for a quantity NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) cell together with LFP (lithium iron phosphate). And it can’t solely accommodate the cell sorts VW has developed by itself but additionally next-generation sodium-ion or solid-state chemistries. A 2024 settlement between PowerCo and the solid-state battery tech agency QuantumScape, for example, permits PowerCo to make as much as 40 gigawatt-hours of solid-state lithium-metal cells yearly, with the choice to double that to 80 gigawatt-hours. The businesses concerned haven’t detailed a timeline
They’re additionally nearly right here—the NMC ones, that’s. VW introduced its plan for the unified cell format 4 years in the past this month. It promised then, in 2021, that it might ramp up manufacturing of those unified cells round 2025, in a small quantity at first, and it’s delivered precisely that.
VW unified cell format
PowerCo says it has already produced over 100,000 cells and efficiently examined them. That’s at its location in Salzgitter; PowerCo has two different manufacturing areas within the works, in Valencia, Spain, and in St. Thomas, Ontario (Canada). Valencia and Ontario are each as a result of ramp up in 2026.
Volkswagen has already stated that its Salzgitter manufacturing unit could have a goal quantity of 40 gigawatt-hours per yr—sufficient for about 500,000 EVs. And altogether, the three factories are as a result of produce as much as 200 gigawatt-hours of cells yearly.
VW EV platforms and E/E architectures
The way it all matches collectively: SSP + SDV + …cell-to-body?
VW is within the midst of large change, because it embarks on a grasp plan that goals, over the following few years, to consolidate a variety of various platforms and several other electrical and electronics architectures all the way down to a single modular Scalable Programs Platform (SSP) plus a software-defined car method that can make the most of Rivian’s zonal structure and reconceive every thing from how zones are outlined to the car interface itself.
Neither the production-bound ID.Every1 (under), previewing a sub-$25,000, nor the production-bound, sub-$30,000 ID.2all, which is coming earlier than that, are U.S.-bound. The ID.1 is about to make use of “components” of the Rivian-derived zonal structure, mated with quite a few MEB parts carried over.
Volkswagen ID.Every1
SSP will arrive in full kind within the ID Golf, which is due round 2028, VW says. That’s nonetheless a far-off risk for the U.S., though SSP will quickly after that propagate to a variety of fashions, sorts, and types from the entire group.
And the following cease, VW’s battery folks say, is cell-to-body tech—in EVs that had been designed from the begin to incorporate battery cells instantly into the physique. VW’s SSP will reportedly allow this, though it’s but unclear whether or not some or all autos on the platform will supply it and when.
What additionally nonetheless stays unsure is how rapidly VW intends emigrate its inner combustion fashions to an analogous modular and software-defined method, particularly now that it’d focus extra on hybrids or plug-in hybrids for North America.
And within the meantime, how rapidly it migrates its present MEB EVs just like the ID.4 and ID.Buzz to this seemingly incremental battery-format makeover may find yourself offering a giant enhance to their vary, and enchantment.
