Thousands and thousands of autos on the highway right now in Europe bear Gilles Le Borgne’s imprint. Before getting named head of engineering at Renault Group in 2020, he held a identical submit at PSA Team, now part of Stellantis, where by he labored for a few many years. Le Borgne has taken on even far more accountability at Renault considering the fact that February, when he was named main technological innovation officer. Le Borgne, a two-time Automotive Information Europe Eurostar winner, not too long ago spoke with ANE Associate Publisher and Editor Luca Ciferri and Information Editor Peter Sigal about his most urgent problem: How to boost the efficiency of electric powered vehicles so they are far more inexpensive and sustainable.
Performance, as calculated in kilowatt hrs for every 100 km, is turning out to be a important topic for electric autos. Where is Renault now?
We are in the vicinity of 13 kWh/100 km for the Megane E-Tech (compact), which has a WLTP vary of up to 470 km. We know that motorists can access 450 or even 480 km in normal temperature ailments. This is the place we stand proper now but we are functioning on all facets that affect efficiency.
What are some of all those spots?
About the powertrain, when you take into consideration the motor, inverter and the energy electronics, we are at a small much less than 86 p.c international efficiency [meaning the percent of electricity that powers the wheels]. The motor moreover electric power electronics, about 90 %. We are functioning on the up coming generation of EVs, which will get there close to 2027 and will consist of motors produced with Valeo. We are sticking with an EESM [externally excited synchronous machine], double winding motor with rotor and not with long-lasting magnets. We hope to enhance the performance of the motor plus energy electronics to 93 per cent, which is rather great compared with a permanent magnet motor.
What about charging?
We are shifting to gallium nitride (GaN) technological know-how for the charging to acquire a thing close to 2 or 3 per cent effectiveness in comparison to present-day silicon-dependent technological innovation. When you start with a common DC/DC with a silicon IGBT [insulated gate bipolar transistor power module, or switch], you are someplace all over 93 % performance, and with GaN we hope to be around 95 to 96 per cent. This will show up with the era of EVs introduced all over 2027.
And on the battery aspect?
We will transfer to 800 volt for that generation, lowering the resistance of the cells. One more important stage all-around the battery is preconditioning the temperature ahead of you cost. Thanks to Google’s route planner, when you system a recharge, the auto knows you are going to halt and in situation of cold ailments, it warms the battery to be far more efficient at the begin of the charging. But you want to use the route planner. It is extremely, very economical: When you end at -5 levels, with a demand of 15 per cent, it will choose 46 minutes with out preconditioning for the Megane to achieve 80 percent charge. With preconditioning, it’s 24 minutes, so practically 2 times as fast. Professional customers know to extensively use preconditioning since it is not only about rapid charging, but also about expense. If you quit at a Ionity station, for instance, when you have preconditioning you can decrease the charge from 84 euros to about 20 euros (at -5 degrees) because it can take you 105 minutes charging with average ability that is pretty reduced without having preheating, and with it you can go as quick as 24 minutes. You spend based mostly on minutes, not kilowatts.