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Industrialization
Optimized
development
in AVL’s
new Battery
Innovation
Center
The rapid progress made in the field of battery development means
there is a great demand for optimization with regard to industrialization –
the production and assembly processes. Given the increasing cost pressure
and ever shorter innovation cycles, this aspect is a decisive criterion
when it comes to efficient manufacturing and the fast market launch of
new, more powerful and inexpensive battery systems for electric vehicles.
FROM FUNCTIONAL TO PROCESS DEVELOPMENT
Functional battery development largely revolves around the integration of
cells in modules and batteries. Optimizations, regarding safety, lifetime and
reliability, account for roughly one third of the costs of the entire battery
system. Reducing this overhead is currently one of the biggest challenges
facing the automotive industry. AVL has focused on this topic for over
ten years. Our approach is not to consider functional development on its
own, but to link it consistently with the development of highly-efficient
production processes.
AVL BATTERY INNOVATION
CENTER ENHANCES
SIMULTANEOUS ENGINEERING
The AVL Battery Innovation Center
(BIC) in Graz opens new opportunities
in this area. The BIC is
an internal platform that is open to
customers to promote the innovation
of production processes and the
further development of conventional
batteries, as well as cell2body and
module2chassis concepts. Functional
and process development go hand
in hand. Thanks to the direct cooperation
between experts in functional
battery development, production
planners, and parts and machine
manufacturers, it is possible to solve
conflicts of objective that typically
come with the mix of requirements
from the fields of mechanics, thermal
management, electrics, electronics
and chemistry, early on. Function,
manufacturability and costs
are balanced from the outset. The
simultaneous engineering approach,
one which we have followed for a
long time, is undergoing a considerable
expansion and the industrialization
of batteries can be parallelized
with product development
to a degree previously unattained.
READY FOR PRODUCTION,
WITH EQUALLY HIGH QUALITY
The BIC is built in such a way that it
serves as a production line, in which
the process optimizations go hand
in hand with new production technologies
and inline quality tests. At
stations, some of which are fully-automated,
we are able to represent all
“
I N T E R V I EW
Georg von Falck
Skill Area Manager Product
Quality & Production Engineering
focus: What was the motivation for AVL to
build and run its own Battery Innovation
Center?
von Falck: Roughly five years ago, we started to
radically rethink the production and assembly
processes. However, we have previously always
had to have our concepts tested and validated
externally by different partners, which
has been very expensive. With the BIC, we have
now bundled everything under one roof – it is
our one-stop-shop for all the requirements of
modern battery development.
focus: What are the advantages for customers?
von Falck: They are extremely varied. The most
important benefits are with regard to time-tomarket,
process innovation, optimization of
product costs, improved product quality, and
process safety.