Designing Smart, Safe, and Connected Electric Vehicles
The quest for designing the optimal electric vehicle that is smart, safe, and connected and delivers a customized user experience is setting new standards in automotive benchmarks. The challenge is that many need to turn to new approaches in the engineering design process to design. validate, and deliver an intelligent vehicle experience. This requires new thinking and processes, along with a convergence of old approaches, and redefining performance and safety measures. Since this is a very new market place there is little historical data or experiences to learn from, those in it are carving out the product innovation advancements in real-time.
The automotive industry is riding this wave as carmakers compete to deliver vehicles that feature their latest innovations to capture consumers’ attention and business. As the Internet of Things continues to grow, companies are now inventing alternative transportation solutions that take advantage of intelligent city services to provide people with the best mobility experiences.
Smart, Safe and Connected solutions based on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform deliver innovative technology that supports end-to-end digital continuity between the multiple disciplines involved in conceptual design and embedded electronics and software development of the intelligent car. Carmakers can address vehicle development using a systems engineering approach to manage the complex task of making cars smarter, safer and more efficient.
The two main areas of design focus that are completely different from combustion vehicles include the electric drive and the battery. A recent blog post on Dassault Systémes blog noted these design challenges:
The electric drive is a complicated system whose parts need to work together effectively and efficiently. These include the gear box and electric machine, which need to be designed carefully to avoid over-designing. Over-designing leads to excess material, weight and cost and system engineering helps to precise and balance targets like maximum torque, power and speed, in the context of the whole vehicle.
The design must fulfill requirements for performance, efficiency, thermal, noise and vibration, etc. It is key to include multi-disciplinary design explorations and optimizations in order to reduce the required time of the development cycle. Once the many components of the electric drive have been implemented, their performance must be verified against the targets defined by Model-Based Systems Engineering, or MBSE.
In addition to the electric drive, the battery is a vital part of an electric car – and it’s not simple to design, either, especially when considering temperature. Batteries are akin to humans in that they perform best within a certain range of temperatures. If a battery’s temperature is too high or too low, it can result in lower vehicle range or shortened battery life.
Batteries involve multiple and connected physics, making them tricky to design, but Dassault Systèmes is working on a solution that connects mechanical and system design, materials and chemistry modeling, and performance assessment of battery cells, modules and packs.
When a battery is evaluated along with the electric drive on a vehicle, engineers and manufacturers can get a real idea of the performance and range of the battery rather than relying on a test at a test cell. The battery performance can be tested with real load on the battery, enabling an accurate picture of how it will perform in the real world.
Learn more about the challenges of electric vehicle design by downloading this new Electric Vehicle eBook: Electric Drive: How Can You Level Up? When you download this eBook, you’ll receive two bonus downloads for EV design on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
