If you happen to be seeking to find out much more about EV batteries, Lucid Motors CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson could have just delivered the best primer yet. Over roughly 36 minutes, this initially video in a series covers just about each and every aspect of the Lucid Air battery pack and how it assists allow the luxury sedan’s 520-mile maximum range.
Rawlinson begins with the fundamentals: power and energy. Energy represents no matter if work—such as operating up a hill—can be achieved, although energy represents how quick it can be accomplished, Rawlinson explains. In electric automobiles, energy is expressed in kilowatts (typically converted to horsepower for comparisons with internal-combustion automobiles) although power is expressed in kilowatt-hours.
Lucid leans on cylindrical cells, as do Tesla and Rivian—partly for their much more constant cooling behavior. Each 2170-format cell has about 17 watt-hours of power, which Rawlinson reckons could propel the Air about 140 yards, in case you have been asking yourself.
Lucid Air battery cells
To meet Lucid’s original variety target of about 400 miles, Rawlinson and corporation calculated that they would will need about six,000 cylindrical cells, which have been then arranged in 300-cell modules mounted below the floor. Each module has 42 volts, for a total of 924 volts in the 22-module Air Grand Touring and Dream Edition packs.
Lucid Air battery module
Lucid utilizes a somewhat diverse cooling program than other automakers, putting cells quite close collectively and utilizing cooling plates at the cell ends rather than operating coolant channels among the cells. Again, it is about efficiency. Modules with coolant channels are tricky to manufacture with the essential precision, and cells have a tendency to disperse much more heat at their ends anyway, Rawlinson explains.
It’s not surprising that Lucid is so focused on battery tech. It employed to be Atieva, a battery corporation, and in some methods the Air builds on the company’s Formula E experience.
Lucid builds its personal modules and packs in Arizona, close to its assembly for the automobiles themselves. It’s a approach it is created to scale up to many hundreds of thousands of vehicles annually.
Watch the video under, and if that physics course you had ages ago wasn’t fairly performing it for understanding how EVs operate, we’re suspecting Rawlinson will.
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Keyword: Watch Lucid’s CEO give the best EV battery primer yet