Mach-E Extended Range Battery buffers and DCFC limits

[RedStallion]

More and more vendors are offering 800V powertrain equipment. From my experience with an EV OEM, the other components such as DC-DC, EPS, HVAC, etc were hard to find in 800V. Plus the powertrain still needs to be designed to handle 400V DCFC, which adds extra complexity. As an example, the Taycan includes a 50kW HV DC-DC (150kW optional) just for 400V voltage DCFC.

The question comes why should the charging voltage be the same as powertrain. You can have different battery configurations for charging and driving. Especially if you have two motors, each can be powered with 400V batteries, and those two batteries can be charged either in series from 800V or in parallel from 400V chargers.

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[EV Lab]

The question comes why should the charging voltage be the same as powertrain. You can have different battery configurations for charging and driving. Especially if you have two motors, each can be powered with 400V batteries, and those two batteries can be charged either in series from 800V or in parallel from 400V chargers.

It's a much more complex setup... the DC-DC, HVAC and BMS would need to support both 400V and 800V. There would need to be extra contactors and both 800V and 400V DCFC would need to be supported. I've built such a pack and it's not trivial.