The Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) and Italdesign joint-venture partnership announced in April is more evidence confirming the acceleration of the vehicle electrification trend across the globe.
For instance, a recent analysis by Frost & Sullivan finds that the electric vehicle (EV) market in the U.S. is expected to flourish with government incentives driving EV ownership. The “xEV” market in the U.S. is estimated to register nearly five-fold growth, reaching almost 7 million in unit sales by 2025 from 1.4 million in 2020.
The WAE/Italdesign offering of engineering and design experts has broader applications, especially for companies to accelerate their market entries to capitalize on trends.
“Demand for high-performance electric vehicles is continuing to show considerable growth, but to date, there has not been a complete EV production solution,” said Paul McNamara, Technical Director at WAE.
The tie-up is intended to provide the upper premium automotive sector with a complete high-performance EV production solution. It combines a state-of-the-art composite electric-vehicle rolling chassis from WAE with turn-key vehicle development services from Italdesign. The joint venture can enable both disciplines to established OEMs in the automotive sector, supporting them in the creation of a range of upper premium EVs from high-performance GTs, crossovers, and sedans.
The foundation of this new venture is WAE’s innovative EV architecture. Differentiating itself from other EV platforms currently in the market, WAE’s EVX integrates the battery casing with elements more commonly thought of as part of the body structure. Front and rear chassis structures mount to the carbon composite case and crash loads can be transferred via internal reinforcements to the integral side sills. The resulting higher profiled cross-section achieves much of the torsional stiffness needed to deliver the full potential of the platform. These two design philosophies reduce reliance on the upper structure, which then gives greater design freedom for a variety of “top hats.”
From WAE rolling chassis, Italdesign’s engineering team then can complete the vehicle architecture, adding safety systems, structures, and UX devices. The modular platform can be the base to build on for several high-performances variants, each a fully customizable solution adaptable to individual brands’ needs.
With an emphasis on high performance, reduced time to market, flexibility, and affordability at low-to-medium volumes, the new platform is capable of supporting production runs up to 10,000 units.
“With 53 years of experience in design and engineering development, our role in the partnership will be to advance the rolling chassis developed by WAE to the complete platform and shape it according to the vehicle body style, architecture, and contents defined with customers,” said Antonio Casu, CTO at Italdesign.“We are targeting business cases that will cover different production volumes from an ultra-limited series up to 10,000 units a year, 500 of which can be built by Italdesign at our facilities in Turin.”
Featuring a molded composite structural battery, EVX is said to set new standards, reducing both investment and part costs. The core pack, designed in-house by WAE has the ability to deliver 1000 kW with 104-120 kW·h of energy. The flexibility within the module design enables expansion of the pack, enabling up to 160 kW·h for a potential 1000-km (620-mi) vehicle range.
WAE was the original supplier of batteries to the entire grid for FIA Formula E World Championship cars in 2014, a relationship that has been revived for the 2022-23 season. It also supplies battery systems to the new ETCR touring car series for electric cars and Extreme-E.
The platform can accommodate wheelbases from 2900 to 3100 mm (114 to 122 in), with customers able to choose with both rear-wheel drive and four-wheel drive layouts. EVX is lightweight combining recycled composite materials with aluminum setting new standards for static and torsional stiffness. With class-leading performance and mass targets, it supports a flexible range of powertrain options with good aerodynamics and safety performance.
“We will be able to support both new automotive entrants in bringing halo EVs to market—and established OEMs on lower volume high-performance models—with turnkey project delivery across the board, homologation included,” said McNamara. “As well as our expertise in electrification and vehicle integration, WAE can bring these organizations the advantages of speed-to-market and the support to develop new, upper premium EVs from design to industrialization with a defined route-to-market strategy through our industrial partnerships.”
