BEMA - Battery Enclosure Materials Automation

There is a pressing need to meet net-zero emissions regulations and targets, as road and urban air mobility transport moves rapidly to adopt electric powertrains by 2030\. This requires vehicles manufactures to target mass reduction and increased power density at every opportunity to achieve vehicle performance and range.

The rapid shift to electric vehicles has used metal battery enclosures as a 'known quantity' for a safety-critical areas in the first generation vehicle platforms in production today. In these vehicles composites are also in use to address both structural and weight advantages.

State-of-the-art battery enclosures have yet to make use of full-composite design with none being manufactured or tested to the degree required to give vehicle manufactures confidence for volume use.

The BEMA project seeks to deliver these improvements in battery packs by tackling the twinned outcomes of i) using an alternative material technology in ii) a fully automated environment optimised to produce an enclosure which is optimised to give the maximum energy capacity from the available volume.

In response to these challenges, Solvay and Airborne are collaborating to bring the benefit of material design and automation developments to the next generation of battery packs. By tackling the twinned outcomes of using lightweight material technology and fully automated production systems, BEMA will produce an alternative to metallic battery enclosures.