Charged EVs | AZL launches project to scale composite battery casings for electric trucks and buses

AZL, a German composites engineering group, has launched a collaborative project to make plastic-based battery casings economically viable for electric trucks, buses and off-highway vehicles. Plastic casings are already used in passenger cars as an alternative to steel and aluminum, where AZL says they cut weight and open new routes to lower cost. The new Joint Partner Project, “Scaling Composite Battery Casings,” will focus on applying those gains to commercial vehicles, which have much lower production volumes per model.

AZL has worked on plastic-based battery casings in passenger-car programs since 2018. The commercial-vehicle market is more fragmented: requirements vary by application, duty cycle, vehicle architecture and manufacturer, and lower volumes per model make dedicated tooling harder to justify. The project will compare requirements across vehicle types to find commonalities and platform approaches that can bundle volumes beyond a single model.

Three modularization strategies sit at the center of the work. Capacity Scaling varies the number of standardized enclosure units to reach different battery capacities. In-Mould Variants creates variants through adapted material configurations or exchangeable mold elements. Cross-Model Combination mixes standardized casing variants across different vehicle models and use profiles.

Functional integration is a central advantage of plastic-based designs, according to AZL: mounting points, sealing surfaces, coolant connectors and temperature-control functions can be molded directly into the casing. This can reduce the number of separate parts, assembly steps and joining elements, lowering system cost and weight. AZL says the designs, which use fiber-reinforced plastics, thermoplastic semi-finished products and hybrid plastic-metal constructions, can also improve fire safety.

“The challenge is not to prove the general potential of plastic-based battery casings. The decisive question now is how to enable economic scaling for trucks, buses and off-highway vehicles, even though the volumes per model are significantly lower than in the passenger car sector,” says Philipp Fröhlig, Head of Industrial Services at AZL Aachen. “Modularization is the key lever.”

Source: AZL Aachen