Automotive Engineering - September 2024 - 36

Q&
A
VW engineering chief on wireless charging
at DC speeds
During the annual Management Briefing Seminars held by the
Center for Automotive Research in Traverse City, Michigan, this
year, SAE Media sat down with Volkswagen North America's
Lyndon Lie. Lie is the company's EVP and chief engineering officer,
overseeing VW's North American engineering teams focused
on developing products for local markets. VW has over
2,000 engineers in North America, with teams in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, working on high-voltage battery and electrification
and HMI connectivity, and teams in
Mexico responsible for more traditional
body, chassis, and interior work.
Can you talk a little bit about how
VW's 270 kW wireless charging
technology was developed?
Volkswagen has programs where
we sponsor PhD students, and
we're partnered with the University
of Tennessee, Knoxville, which also
runs Oak Ridge lab. Some of them
are working to develop a wireless
charger that's as fast as DC fast
charging. It's challenging, but this is
one of those solutions that, when
you look at us, you wonder, 'Why
didn't I think of it?' The package is
maybe 16 inches (41 cm) in diameter
and uses three-phase charging
with a rotating magnetic field between
the three phases and the
same size receiver on the car.
That's similar to what we saw from
companies like Witricity 10 or more
years ago.
Even the ones that are on the market
now, the latest ones, are 22 kW.
We're more than ten times that. It
has DC fast charging speed, and the
hottest it gets is 106 F (41 C).
Because of the way this rotating
field is set up, it never gets hot.
Instead of heating one area, it's
pulsing as it's rotating around so it
never heats one physical location
long enough to get hot. Typical
chargers are single phase and it's a
lot of current that you're trying to
pass through. But because it's a
single phase, you're heating it up
for a longer period of time.
36 September 2024
Where might we see this in the future?
We're looking at it with Porsche. Audi is looking at it. And it's a
perfect application for heavy duty trucks, because they need a
lot of power. I came from Nikola before coming to Volkswagen,
and we had 730 kWh on-board power. That's a lot of power.
The battery work that's being done in Chattanooga and
elsewhere is not just for the BEVs, but also hybrids and
PHEVs, right?
In my battery team. I have cell experts,
controls experts, thermal
guys, and mechanical for the packaging.
A lot of it's the same [across
powertrains]. You need cooling,
you need controls. But when you
get to the actual software, that's
where it starts getting different.
Cell chemistry is different. Cooling
may be slightly different. So, the
team's the same. It's broken up by
the engineer. You may be working
on a BEV, I may be working on a
PHEV, but you're talking back and
forth, and you're sitting next to
each other.
VW chief
engineering
officer Lyndon Lie
at MBS 2024.
" I don't see any allnew
engines coming
for passenger cars. For
trucks? Sure. But for
passenger cars, we'll
add electrification. "
What can you tell me about continuous
improvements to ICE?
I don't see any all-new engines coming
for passenger cars. For trucks?
Sure. But for passenger cars, we'll
add electrification. We'll add enhancements
to it, so you could take
a 2-L engine and get 400 horsepower
out of it because we've added
an E-axle to the back end. That gives
us all kinds of flexibility.
I also see range extenders as another
option that's going to come
toward the end of the PHEV cycle,
because, really, it's a BEV with a
gasoline generator. And it's a small
engine, like a 1.5-L running a generator
in your frunk. Instead of putting
a lot more money in a whole
new ICE that's got a very short life
cycle, we can tweak what we have
and put more money into the rest
of the propulsion system. It gives us
a lot of opportunities.
Sebastian Blanco
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
SEBASTIAN BLANCO
Automotive Engineering - September 2024

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