Mach-E Battery Reverse Engineered

[Generation Strom]

I've updated my article and changed the assumptions for the Standard Range battery pack:
Ford Mustang Mach-E: HV Battery reverse engineered. - Updated

Standard Range Battery Pack - Proposal:

Ford Mustang Mach-E: HV Battery reverse engineered.
Alle Beiträge von Marcus Zacher anzeigen 18. November 2019

On the official media site of Ford there are also some pictures about the HV battery system. I’ve tried to extract some technical information about the construction and design of the HV battery pack and the cell modules. Of course, these are speculations, but I’ve tried to underpin them as well as possible.

The HV battery pack of the Ford Mustang Mach-E is quiet similar to the one of the Chevy Bolt EV. (Photo: © Ford)

The Extended Range battery contains 12 cell modules. In the rear there are two floors of cell modules. (Photo: © Ford)
As many of the competitors of the Mustang Mach-E Ford (Jaguar I-Pace, Mercedes-Benz EQC, Audi e-tron, Porsche Taycan …) installs pouch cells in the battery pack, which are made by LG Chem.

Comparing the battery system with the one of the good old Chevy Bolt EV you will recognize a lot of similarities:

The battery system of the Chevy Bolt is made by LG Electronics. The pouch cells are from LG Chem. (Picture: © Chevrolet / GM)
The basic construction of the battery pack with the two floors as well as the cell module connectors (orange busbars) are quite similar, the same with the cell modules. The Chevy Bolt uses cell modules where two cells are mounted on one black plastic cell carrier (frame). The cell carrier also includes a thermal path to the cooling plates of the cell modules. This construction is practically the same at the Mustang Mach-E battery. So it’s very likely that the battery system of the Ford Mustang Mach-E is designed and made by LG Electronics.

According to Ford the Extended Range (ER) battery contains 376 cells. With this information it’s possibe to partially reverse engineer the battery system:

Die Extended Range HV battery of the Mustang Mach-E contains 10 large cell modules. Each large cell module contains 32 cells. These cells are connected 4 times in parallel and these 4 parallel cells are connected 8 times in series. The 2 small cell modules contain 2 cell carriers less, so there are only 28 cells, which must be in 4 times parallel connection as well.
For the Standard Range (SR) battery Ford specifies 288 cells in the battery system. According to this article the cell configuration of th e SR battery pack is 3p96s. In a former version of this article I assumed that all cell modules in the SR and ER pack are the same. But obviously that’s not the case.

Left: Standard Range battery system; right: Extended Range battery system. (screenshots of the Ford configurator, pictures: © Ford)
The 2nd floor has been removed in the SR battery pack (see picture above), there are only 10 cell modules left. The large cell modules are limited to 32 cell and the two small cell modules are limited to 28 cells, because the ER pack already fills the entire package space.

Because the SR pack has a 3p-configuration the number of cells of each cell module must be divisible by 3 and by 2 (because of the double cell frames). This could be achieved for example by this configuration:

The SR battery pack contains 8 large cell modules with 3 cells in parallel and 10 cells in series connection. The large cell modules consists of 2 cells less than in the ER pack. The number of cells in the small cell modules are reduced by 4.
With this example the 3p96s-configuration could be arranged. Finally there are four different cell modules sizes, which is quite cost intensive. On the other hand the inverter is always connected to a battery with a similar voltage level.

 

[MachSpeed]

I've updated my article and changed the assumptions for the Standard Range battery pack:
Ford Mustang Mach-E: HV Battery reverse engineered. - Updated

Standard Range Battery Pack - Proposal:

Good read

 

[Azuloval]

Good read

x2

 

[ZSR]

Maybe a stupid question, but how hard is it to plug and play extra battery (from sr to lr) say in 5 years? Are the connectors already in place for the extra cells? If your batteries happens to be a Monday production how hard is it for Ford to replace them? Do they drop from the bottom or do they have to strip the car to the bone? (Sorry if this question is already posted)

 

[buzznwood]

Maybe a stupid question, but how hard is it to plug and play extra battery (from sr to lr) say in 5 years? Are the connectors already in place for the extra cells? If your batteries happens to be a Monday production how hard is it for Ford to replace them? Do they drop from the bottom or do they have to strip the car to the bone? (Sorry if this question is already posted)

The battery pack is bolted in from the bottom so can easily be removed. This is one of the plus points to BEV which are really limited by battery tech as newer batteries with increased density arrive hopefully at some point in the future it will be probably not be that hard to swap in a newer pack for increased range, or a smaller lighter pack for the same range.

 

[dbsb3233]

The battery pack is bolted in from the bottom so can easily be removed. This is one of the plus points to BEV which are really limited by battery tech as newer batteries with increased density arrive hopefully at some point in the future it will be probably not be that hard to swap in a newer pack for increased range, or a smaller lighter pack for the same range.

That's another reason I feel good about just getting the SR battery in mine and saving the $5000. The current ER battery doesn't add enough range (or charge fast enough) to make a difference in me taking my Mach-e on a road trip instead of the ICE. I'd still use the ICE vehicle unless/until range and charging times improve significantly (like say, 300 high-speed miles in 15 minutes). The Mach-e will simply be our primary around-home vehicle.

But who knows, such capability could be available as a replacement battery half a decade from now.

 

[Billyk24]

If the car "stress" is placed upon all the battery cells equally, then I want a larger battery pack as it means a lower amount of stress per cell.

 

[back_at_it_19]

Hey I was wondering why Ford and others choose the pouch style battery when Tesla chooses cylindrical. Anyone know the benefit?

 

[Billyk24]

Solid state batteries are arriving in the future. Increased energy density, smaller space, decreased need for thermal regulation are major pros. Cost issues are the con

 

[DBC]

Hey I was wondering why Ford and others choose the pouch style battery when Tesla chooses cylindrical. Anyone know the benefit?

It's really historical. The Tesla founders couldn't afford to fund battery development -- nor as a tiny startup could they convince a battery company to do it for them -- so they decided to use the existing small cells and wire them together. Since these cells were already being produced in mass, they were relatively cheap and readily available.

Established car manufacturers wanted larger pouch cells to minimize the number of connections and, more importantly, the number of failure points. Because of their size they could get battery companies to produce these larger cells.

Tesla didn't have any issue with battery failures -- and the chemistry was good -- so it has continued with the small cylindrical cells (though the size has gotten somewhat larger and the chemistry has changed). There may be some manufacturing advantages but I'm not sure of that. Other auto manufacturers have continued with the much larger pouch cells.

 

[zhackwyatt]

Solid state batteries are arriving in the future. Increased energy density, smaller space, decreased need for thermal regulation are major pros. Cost issues are the con

What does pouch vs cylinder have to do with solid state?

 

[ChasingCoral]

What does pouch vs cylinder have to do with solid state?

Nothing. It's a completely different technology.

 

[zhackwyatt]

Nothing. It's a completely different technology.

That's what I thought. I was confused about the response.

 

[timbop]

My concern with Tesla's 5000 cylinder battery approach is recycling. It seems a whole lot easier to disassemble a pouch cell and extract the rare earths vs having to break thousands of batteries out of a plastic resin to get to them.

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