Volkswagen's third joint venture in China is scheduled to launch in mid-to-late July. The styling is highly reminiscent of the overseas SEAT Cupra Tavascan, and the length of 4663mm and the wheelbase of 2766mm mean that this car belongs to the same compact SUV class as the Volkswagen ID.4. However, the motor did not copy the power combination of 80kW + 210kW of the SEAT model in overseas markets, but made certain adjustments.
Compared to the ID.4, the power of the rear motor has increased by 20 kW to 170 kW, and the all-electric range has increased by 21 km to 621 km, but the battery pack has been reduced by 2.4 kWh, and the final consumption should be 82.4 kWh.
From the above product points, it can be seen that this car still did not choose to use a more powerful drive motor in the era of cheap power, but only increased the power of the rear axle motor by 20kW; At the same time, the 80 kWh battery pack achieves a range of only 621 km.
Most typically, the Tesla Model Y has a range of 688 km (CLTC) with a 78.4 kWh battery pack, and the same car, with a 60 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery, has a range of 554 km (only about 70 km less).
Therefore, the large battery pack of Volkswagen ID. and Volkswagen in front of the small battery pack, can not make a significant advantage in battery life?
There are only large battery packs, why?
Volkswagen ID.UNYX and the public declaration information has come out, single-motor and dual-motor versions of the model, using 82.4kWh ternary lithium large battery pack (provided by CATL). The corresponding range is 621 km for a single rear motor and 565 km for a dual-motor four-wheel drive.
There is no extreme cost-effective choice for a small battery pack of about 55kWh like the previous Volkswagen electric car, at least I haven't seen it yet, but the range is about 440km, which is not quite in line with the current mainstream market demand, so it is not a pity that there is no such choice.
After that, the Volkswagen ID. and other optional models are all 82.4kWh large battery pack specifications. The reason why the two optional models are made with large battery packs should be the same as the development ideas of Volkswagen ID.4 and other models, and the car manufacturing platform is still MEB's 400V high-voltage platform architecture, and there is no better optimization of BMS (one main control + three secondary controls, unchanged) and battery cell packaging schemes, so it can only rely on large batteries to pile up the mileage.
Where has this car been optimized?
The official CLTC range is 621km, in fact, it is now possible to speculate how much the real range of this car can reach. The whole platform is talking, that is, under the 400V high-voltage architecture, the battery pack has made a large number of redundant configurations to prevent thermal runaway, and then the battery cells are still stacked schemes, made of 10 square packaging cells, and there is no such thing as the long and short blades or large cylinders that are now the mainstream choice, and the utilization rate may not be high. Relatively speaking, there are relatively few points that can be expanded at the battery level and platform architecture.
More often than not, the changes in the motor include the EDX motor (front motor) produced by Hasco Magna and Volkswagen Automatic Transmission (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. (rear motor) used by Volkswagen ID. and Volkswagen Automatic Transmission (Tianjin) Co., Ltd. EDX, the front motor has been used on the Volkswagen ID.7 VIZZION, this time the parameters have not changed, and the ID.
In order to optimize energy consumption, it may be necessary to rely on the coordination of more powerful rear motor units. The rear axle motor of the ID. and Volkswagen has changed from the rear axle motor model of the Volkswagen BEV model that we see now.
In the use of motor materials, there is no previously expected silicon carbide material, after all, 400V high voltage and only 170kW motor power, the necessity of silicon carbide is not high. But at the beginning of the research and development of this motor, it was designed for miniaturization + higher power, and it should be optimized in size and volume. It may be more conducive to the faster response of the (on/off) speed of motor discharge, which can be regarded as an optimization of energy consumption, but it is definitely not as direct as adding silicon carbide to the motor by changing the 800V platform.
But if you really want to see this configuration of the Volkswagen electric car, you may have to wait for the next generation of new platforms.
82.4 degrees, how is the real battery life?
If the Volkswagen ID. and Volkswagen do not make further optimizations on the current MEB platform, the final power consumption level will remain at 14kWh/100km. After switching to the rear axle motor, there may be a slight breakthrough, perhaps reducing the power consumption level to less than 14 kWh/100 km.
Theoretically, after the motor is optimized, it can play a role in optimizing energy consumption.
After the new 170kW motor is put on the car, it will have higher efficiency characteristics, and this feature will allow the motor to work longer in the high efficiency range, which can effectively reduce the unnecessary power loss in the energy conversion process. Although the power of this motor is not high compared with the products of the current mainstream new forces, if it can achieve high efficiency, it can more fully convert electrical energy into mechanical energy, which is not bad. At present, at least at the motor level, there are some signs of optimizing energy consumption.
However, the optimization of energy consumption of the motor is often accompanied by the improvement of the performance of the battery management system, which can make the energy of the battery more reasonably distributed and utilized, and it is also a relatively direct optimization scheme. However, at present, Volkswagen ID. and Volkswagen still use the same 400V high-voltage MEB platform as other pure electric products of the current Volkswagen, and the optimization space is relatively limited.
Is the energy consumption possible to be less than 14 kWh/100 km?
Referring to the weight information of the Volkswagen ID. and Volkswagen, the curb weight is 2166kg and 2266kg, and then referring to the current Volkswagen pure electric compact SUV on sale, the weight is about the same. The energy consumption of the single-motor and dual-motor versions of the latter is 14.3 kWh/100 km and 15.5 kWh/100 km respectively. However, the car did not replace the rear axle motor, or used the 150kW rear axle motor.
14.3kWh and 15.5kWh, this level of power consumption, in fact, has a lot of room for optimization. There is room for optimization in the BMS, there is room for optimization in the motor, and even the optimization space can be found on the entire high-voltage platform; However, if we only see changes in the motor, the increase in energy consumption will not be particularly noticeable, and it may drop to the level of 14 kWh/100 km. Theoretically, after improving the efficiency of the motor, the energy consumption level of the whole vehicle has an optimization effect of 3%-5%. Then, the energy consumption performance of the model will be 13.88 kWh-13.59 kWh/100 km and 15.04 kWh-14.73 kWh.
According to this energy consumption level, the maximum range of the vehicle is 600km and 550km respectively, corresponding to the rear-wheel drive and four-wheel drive models. The endurance achievement rate of rear-wheel drive models may be close to the level of about 95% (there may be some errors between the data under ideal use conditions and the actual use).
As a result, the 82.4 kWh battery pack has a range of about 600 km. Compared with the current domestic new energy vehicles, the lithium iron phosphate battery pack of about 85kWh can basically reach 700km range; The range of about 600km can be made with a lithium iron phosphate battery of about 70kWh.
At last
Volkswagen ID. and the public car, in the three electric level has made certain changes, but the change is not big enough, at present only see the adjustment made in the motor, increase 20kW power, motor efficiency slightly improved, and then bring a benign feedback, is the energy consumption reduced by about 3%-5%. After this 170kW motor, it will be successively distributed to other Volkswagen BEV models.
However, from an objective point of view, using a relatively large battery pack of 82.4kWh to make a range of 621km (the actual level may be 600km), in fact, there is still a bit of a loss. Let's give a few losses, first of all, the space utilization rate in the battery pack is not enough (given by square cells), a lot of thermal runaway redundancy is also weighted, and the BMS system has not been optimized or iterated.