Key Considerations for Developing Electric Heavy-Duty Fleet Batteries

More electrified public buses, light-duty delivery vans, trucks, and even taxis are helping to power the transportation transition to e-mobility. Fleet electrification offers a significant opportunity to lower carbon emissions. However, one of the biggest challenges in designing batteries for fleet and heavy vehicles is extending the range per hourly charge. This includes designing heavy vehicles with enough electric power to ferry heavier loads over longer distances.

Original equipment makers of heavy transport vehicles and fleet operators have a sharp learning curve to improve fleet electrification. In addition to the ability to lower carbon emissions, they need to balance charging times with the operational costs of charging and running their fleets. The EV battery cell lies at the heart of these challenges. EV batteries come in different form factors. There are cylindrical cells at the individual cell level, or more powerful pouch and prismatic cells. These cells form modules that connect to battery packs for assembly in the vehicle chassis. For example, a fully-electric sedan has between 3,000 to 9,000 cylindrical cells. On the other hand, an electric truck can have as many as 20,000 to 30,000 cylindrical cells.

This white paper looks at different cell chemistries, the benefits and trade-offs in terms of weight, capacity, performance, fast-charging capability, packaging, and recyclability. It also gives an overview of testing at the battery cell, module, and pack levels. It also looks at the potential of electrified fleets as another form of distributed energy resources (DER) as global land transportation transitions into a vehicle-to-grid (V2) enabled future whereby electric vehicles can serve as mobile energy storage systems on wheels to optimize energy utilization in the smart grids of the future.