Substitution of steel and aluminium advantages in weight, functional integration and mass production and technology demonstrator as the basis for series developments.

Mumbai, December 2021 – Speciality chemicals company LANXESS and Kautex Textron GmbH & Co. KG, a Textron Inc. company, have been collaborating for several years to research whether battery housings for electric vehicles can be designed and manufactured from technical thermoplastics. Together, they have developed a near-series technology demonstrator in a feasibility study. With a length and width of around 1,400 millimetres each, the system is a technically sophisticated, large-format all-plastic housing part with a weight in the mid-double-digit kilogram range.

The goal of the project was to demonstrate the advantages of thermoplastics over metals in terms of weight and cost reduction, functional integration and electrical insulation behaviour.

“As a first step, we have completely dispensed with the use of metallic reinforcement structures while proving we can commercially produce these complex large components,” Felix Haas, Director Product Development at Kautex Textron, explains.

“Going forward, Kautex and LANXESS want to use the results of the cooperation to enter into development projects for series production with automotive manufacturers,” adds Dr Christopher Hoefs, Project Manager e-Powertrain at LANXESS.

The demonstrator was developed based on the battery housing of a C-segment electric vehicle. It consists of a housing tray with crash structure, a housing cover and an underrun (underbody) protection. The housing components can be produced in a single-stage Direct Long Fiber Thermoplastic (D-LFT) moulding process. LANXESS has optimized Durethan B24CMH2.0 as the material for the D-LFT moulding compound. Kautex Textron compounds the PA6 for the process with glass fibre rovings. The local reinforcement of the housing structure is carried out using continuous fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composites of the Tepex dynalite brand from LANXESS. “The process enables shorter and thus more economical cycle times than the processes in which steel or aluminium are processed,” Haas explains.

“We continue to work together on optimising the production and structural design of the components. The aim is to carry out the majority of the development work virtually, in order to save costs in prototype design and to shorten the time to market of future series components,” Hoefs says.