Designing an e-SUV to Meet Global Front Crash Safety Standards

Vehicle crashworthiness has improved tremendously over the past 20 years with increasing scenarios being defined and assessed by governments and nonprofits every few years. Bodies such as NTHSA, IIHS and EuroNCAP created safety ratings to distinguish objectively which vehicles are the safest for consumers. In doing so, automotive OEMs must spend more resources and design additional crash safety features onto their vehicles, often making them heavier in the process. As a result, negatively impacting the driving range of an electric vehicle. At Lucid Motors, through a holistic and first-principles approach, CAE simulations were used to guide the design of the Lucid Gravity to pursue highest possible crash safety ratings and battery protection while minimizing weight on the vehicle structure. By keeping the weight low, the Lucid Gravity Grand Touring was able to achieve an estimated EPA-rated range of 450 miles, which is groundbreaking for a full size 3-row electric SUV. This paper presents the structural performance of the Lucid Gravity SUV in 4 front collision load-cases: The USNCAP full frontal rigid barrier (FFB), Euro-NCAP mobile progressive deformable barrier (MPDB), IIHS small overlap rigid barrier (SORB) and IIHS moderate overlap deformable barrier (ODB). The vehicle crash performances were favorable in all 4 scenarios in CAE simulations, which were later confirmed in development as well as official tests. Some patent-pending crash safety features were implemented onto the vehicle architecture to facilitate and balance the performance metrics of the 4 frontal load-cases. Intelligent packaging and placement of key load-paths also contributed to the favorable crash performances. This paper will focus on the USNCAP FFB and Euro-NCAP MPDB loadcases. The IIHS ODB and SORB loadcases will be discussed in another paper in the future.