Integration and Modularity Analysis for Improving Hybrid Vehicles Battery Pack Assembly

The lithium ion battery is one of the key technologies of electric and hybrid vehicles. Though the electric vehicles pose a promising solution to conventional vehicles, the high cost and weight of the battery package makes the electric vehicle less competitive in the market. As the current researchers focus on making the battery pack more affordable, an approach can also be made in modularizing and speeding up the assembly process of these battery packs. Therefore, this paper focuses on achieving a smaller, lighter and less expensive battery pack suitable for global production using Design for Assembly (DFA) principle. The approach includes considering a battery pack of Audi Q5 as a case study and studying its assembly sequences. DFA principles would be applied to the assembly design, to simplify/reduce its components through part integration, and making recommendations to modularize the design so that similar assembly processes can be used for variety of battery requirements. The manufacturing cost of the proposed suggestions are not included in the paper due to lack of data available which therefore defined the scope of the study to introduce ideas that could be implemented to improve only assembly process using Boothroyd Dewhurst DFA method.