Mahle presents new drive & thermal management tech
The German automotive supplier Mahle provided insights into its developments in the field of e-mobility at a ‘Tech Day’. In the eMobility business, the company is increasingly relying on its system competence – and not just the sale of individual components.
The new electric drive system is a new modular technology system for electric motors that combine the advantages of the SCT (Superior Continuous Torque) and MCT (Magnet-free Contactless Transmitter) electric drives and thus combines high performance and contactless power transmission with the elimination of rare earths and high efficiency. The development approach was first mentioned in 2021.
In addition to the new drive technology, the automotive supplier has developed a new thermal management module that combines essential components. This reduces the installation space, the development effort and the costs and makes the entire system significantly more efficient: According to Mahle, up to 20 per cent more range is possible. Both products will be presented to the general public for the first time at the IAA Mobility in September 2023.
“MAHLE will position itself as the system champion in e-mobility,” said Arnd Franz, Chairman of the Mahle Group Management Board. System competence is a decisive success factor in electrification, said the CEO at the Tech Day. This is because the interaction of the individual components in electric drives is “much more complex than in combustion engines”.
Mahle has grown up as a supplier for combustion engines, but is struggling with the transformation to electromobility. In the meantime, the group sees “an almost threefold higher sales potential” for battery-electric cars than for vehicles with combustion engines. The know-how from thermodynamics is now to be increasingly transferred to electromobility, for example in the cooling of the drive and the batteries, important for fast charging.
“In the case of the e-car, key end customer acceptance factors depend on thermal management: Service life of the battery, cruising range of the e-car, performance of the drive system and fast-charging capability. This significantly increases the complexity of the system,” Mahle writes in the press release. The new thermal management module was developed to reduce this complexity and increase efficiency at the same time.
In terms of charging infrastructure, Mahle is focusing on wireless charging in addition to wired solutions for long-term parkers (Mahle chargeBIG) – a convenient and promising alternative for electric vehicles. Together with Siemens, Mahle is developing an overall system consisting of infrastructure and vehicle technology in order to set standards for inductive charging systems. As part of the Tech Day, the automotive supplier presented a new automated positioning system for this charging technology, in which the vehicle recognises the induction surface in the ground and provides the driver with positioning support.
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