If you’re looking to learn more about EV batteries, Lucid Motors CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson just might have the best advice. Over about 36 minutes, the first video in this series to cover every aspect of Lucid Air battery pack and how it helps to activate the luxury sedan Maximum range 520 miles.
Rawlinson starts with the basics: energy and power. Energy represents whether a task — such as running up a hill — can be completed, while energy represents how quickly it can be completed, Rawlinson explains. In electric cars, power is expressed in kilowatts (usually converted to horsepower for comparison with internal combustion vehicles) while energy is expressed in kilowatt-hours.
Lucid relies on cylindrical cells, Tesla and Rivian too—Especially for their more consistent cooling behavior. Each 2170 format cell has about 17 watt-hours of energy, which Rawlinson calculates can propel Air around 140 yards, in case you were wondering.
Lucid Air battery cell
To achieve Lucid’s original long-range goal of about 400 miles, Rawlinson and company calculated that they would need about 6,000 cylinder cells, which were then arranged into 300 floor-mounted modules. Each module has 42 volts, for a total of 924 volts in the package of 22 Air Grand Touring and Dream Edition modules.
This is a higher voltage than other EVs, and the advantage of that has to do with Ohm’s law, the fundamental law that describes the flow of energy through an electrical circuit. Since Ohm’s law states that heat loss is proportional to the square of the current, the reduced current allows more power to be generated with greater efficiency, Rawlinson explains. Doubling the voltage allows halving the current, which Rawlinson calls the “core principle” of Lucid’s engineering philosophy.
“There is no substitute for voltage in terms of efficiency,” says Rawlinson, ref Lucid’s main focus. The high voltage helps the Air achieve very high charging speeds, he adds, but also creates system-wide performance.
Lucid Air battery module
Lucid uses a slightly different cooling system than other automakers, placing the cells very close together and using cooling pads at the ends of the cells instead of running cooling channels between the cells. Again, it’s about efficiency. Rawlinson explains that modules with cooling channels are difficult to manufacture with the required precision, and the cells tend to disperse more heat at their ends.
It’s no surprise that Lucid is focusing on battery technology again. It used to be Atieva, a battery company, and in a way Air based on the company’s Formula E experience.
Lucid builds its own modules and packages in Arizona, close to assembly for the cars themselves. It’s a process designed to scale to hundreds of thousands of vehicles annual.
Check out the video below, and if the physics course you took years ago doesn’t do it to understand how electric cars work, we doubt Rawlinson will.
