UK project to explore composite drive units for EVs

Led by UK Leamington-spa based engineering consultancy Drive System Design (DSD) the 12-month project, which is part-funded by Innovate UK and also involves the National Composites Centre (NCC) will investigate the use of composites to enable increased power density and reduced unit size.

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“Vehicle range at reasonable cost is still one of the biggest barriers to widespread adoption of EVs, so technology that can increase this through efficiency gains – without adding significantly to unit cost – is crucial,” said DSD’s Head of Mechanical Engineering Markus Hose. “Vehicle manufacturers are facing increasing packaging challenges as they seek to incorporate higher performance EDUs into latest designs, so power density improvements will offer a key competitive advantage.”

One of the ways the project will achieve this, said Hose, is by dealing more effectively with the trade-off between NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) and efficiency. These have historically been managed independently with iterative work typically required to overcome the NVH challenges created by highly efficient EDU designs.