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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow8162:

As Volvo goes electric, here's how it's making its batteries top-notch:

Electric cars are becoming much more important to automakers, and that means those companies are having to learn how to get good with batteries. That was baked into Tesla from day one, but for existing automakers, batteries have to become a new core competency. Recently, Volvo opened its doors in Gothenburg, Sweden, to show us how that's happening, ahead of the launch later this year of its new battery EV, the XC40 Recharge.

Volvo was an early advocate for going electric, announcing a plan for its model range shortly after it told us that it was ending development on diesel engines. That plan calls for 50 percent of its sales to be BEVs by 2025, but actually implementing that plan is more involved than just holding a press conference, and it's a transformation that affects the entire company. Engineers are being retrained to work with electric motors instead of internal combustion engines. Supply lines and purchasing have to get to grips with responsibly sourcing a new range of materials. The carmaker even has to think about what its new EVs should sound like.

[...] Volvo has built its reputation on safety, and obviously the move to electric powertrains can't be allowed to compromise that.

"You may think that it's an advantage to have something smaller like an electrical motor compared to a combustion engine in the front [of the vehicle]. But the way that we design for frontal crashes, taking into consideration the real world accidents where you have angles, different speeds, different offsets, the engine itself is actually part of the system to help distribute the loads," explained Thomas Broberg, one of Volvo's senior technical advisers for safety.

Consequently, don't expect a voluminous Tesla-style cargo frunk between the front wheels of an electric XC40. While there is a storage space under the hood, underneath that (and below the inverter and control electronics for the front motor) is a large steel crash structure that distributes frontal impact loads away from the car's occupants in the same way Volvo's internal combustion engines are designed to do.

The battery pack, like just about every EV since General Motors' AUTOnomy concept of 2002, lives between the front and rear axles, and it contributes significantly to the car's structural rigidity and crashworthiness. One doesn't envy the engineers, for the pack has to satisfy two potentially competing demands. Obviously a collision can't compromise the integrity of the pack itself, because lithium-ion cells don't react well to being short-circuited. But equally, you can't design an indestructible pack unless you want the vehicle occupants to absorb all the kinetic energy of a crash instead.

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