• 05.12.2024

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Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Dec 5, 2024

In early December, Li Auto held a winter vehicle technology day. The event aimed to share winter driving tips with car owners. It also introduced vehicle manufacturing technology. The focus was on improving the driving experience in harsh winter conditions. The event showcased how new energy vehicles can adapt. It highlighted new technologies that differ from traditional fuel vehicles.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Like many previous events, Li Auto’s Technology Day got straight to the point. Li Auto identified three major pain points for electric vehicles in winter: cold cabins, reduced range, and slower charging.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Intelligent cabin temperature adjustment: Comfort first. Many drivers find winter cabin temperatures too cold. Slow heating and uneven temperature distribution frustrate users of new energy vehicles. Most electric cars offer two common solutions for winter heating. The first is PTC direct heating of water or air. This method is simple and fast. However, it struggles to meet heating needs in colder northern regions, leading to increased size, weight, and energy consumption. The second solution involves bypassing heat with an electric compressor. This method generates heat but operates slowly at first and produces high noise levels. To address these drawbacks, the Ideal MEGA uses a self-developed multi-source heat pump system. It features 43 modes to manage energy across various temperature scenarios. For poor heating performance in low temperatures, the system quickly generates heat using the compressor. It heats the refrigerant with the still-warm coolant from air conditioning, activating the heat pump unit and boosting the compressor’s heating capacity.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Stronger heating capability does not guarantee a good comfort experience. In low temperatures, all rows must receive equal warmth. The first row should not heat up quickly while the second row remains cold. Additionally, limbs require more heat than the torso in low temperatures. The foot area needs extra warmth. Providing more heat to the feet improves comfort. It is also important to create a temperature gradient, keeping the feet warm and the head cool during low-temperature driving. To achieve this comfort, precise heat distribution is crucial. The driver’s feet stay in a fixed position. Typically, there are 2 to 3 vents for the driver’s feet. However, the ideal MEGA adds 2 more, totaling 5 vents. The airflow design targets the driver’s foot and ankle. This allows for precise heat delivery, ensuring faster warmth and enhanced comfort for the user.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Ideal Motors addresses a common industry issue: the first row heats quickly while the second row heats slowly or not at all. They use comfort simulation calculations in the Ideal MEGA. This process optimizes the vehicle’s airflow distribution. They set the airflow ratio for the first and second rows at 1 to 0.87. This ratio outperforms the common industry ratios of 1 to 0.55 and 1 to 0.66. Passengers in both rows enjoy equal comfort.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Comfort in all scenarios is not a new concept. Since the L9, Ideal Automotive has adjusted the cabin temperature in real-time using data from 38 vehicle sensors. The new generation product, Ideal MEGA, adds carbon dioxide sensors and negative ion sensors to optimize air quality. It also incorporates weather forecasts and map navigation for better signal recognition. Now, the Ideal MEGA can access data from 51 sensors for climate control. The powerful vehicle control unit processes these diverse signals to achieve intelligent temperature management throughout the vehicle.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Reduce energy consumption starting with thermal management and batteries. In winter, low temperatures shrink the range of electric vehicles. This is a common issue for owners in northern regions. During winter, the air conditioning consumes 15% of energy, and battery loss accounts for about 10%. Ideal Automotive presents a solution that focuses on cutting costs and increasing efficiency. Cutting costs means reducing air conditioning use while maintaining cabin comfort. Increasing efficiency refers to enhancing battery performance in low temperatures. For cost-cutting, Ideal Automotive uses a dual-flow air conditioning box. This design separates the air intake structure into upper and lower layers. It introduces a controlled amount of outside air to the upper layer. This approach reduces the risk of fogging while providing fresh air to passengers. The warm air from the interior circulates in the lower cabin space. This method keeps feet warm with less energy.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Ideal Auto developed smarter control algorithms. They combined temperature and humidity sensors, carbon dioxide sensors, and other rich sensing units. These algorithms can increase the internal circulation air ratio to over 70% without fogging. This significantly saves energy. For example, the Ideal MEGA reduced energy consumption by 57W under the -7°C CLTC standard condition with a dual-layer air conditioning box. This also means a range increase of 3.6 km.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Ideal Auto innovates its thermal management system for winter scenarios. It focuses on efficient heat utilization in various environments. One common scenario is cold starts during winter commutes. In urban driving conditions, the electric drive generates some waste heat for cabin heating, but not much. Traditional systems pass this waste heat through the battery first, heating it. If the battery is sufficiently charged, this heating is unnecessary. It leads to wasted energy. Ideal Auto adds a bypass option in its thermal management system. This allows the electric drive to heat the cabin directly. This approach saves about 12% energy compared to traditional methods.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Ideal Automotive enhances thermal management coverage. They design components efficiently to reduce heat dissipation in the thermal management system. The Ideal MEGA integrates 16 key components, including pumps, valves, and heat exchangers. This integration significantly decreases the number of parts. It reduces pipe length by 4.7 meters and cuts pipe heat loss by 8%. This module is the first in the industry to support 5C supercharging.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

In the open-source area, Ideal Auto invested significant effort in achieving MEGA’s 5C ultra-fast charging performance. They focused on reducing internal resistance levels in battery cells. This effort met low heat generation requirements during charging and improved usable capacity in low temperatures. Ideal Auto analyzed the components of internal resistance. They broke down 17 resistance components across three levels. They then performed feasibility analyses for optimizing each component. Finally, they used superconductive high-activity cathodes and low-viscosity high-conductivity electrolytes. This reduced the low-temperature impedance of the MEGA 5C battery cell by 30%, boosting power capability by over 30%. In real-world low-temperature range tests, this means a 1% reduction in energy loss due to internal resistance, a 1% decrease in battery heating loss, and a 2% increase in overall range. To improve winter charging speed and enhance user experience, Ideal Auto addressed the challenges posed by sudden temperature drops. Reduced battery activity often leads to extended charging times. Under normal conditions, a traditional 2C battery system charges from 10% to 80% in about 30 minutes. In low temperatures, this time can extend to around 50 minutes. To ensure a consistent charging experience for the MEGA’s 5C battery throughout the year, Ideal Auto upgraded technology in both hardware and software. They optimized high-rate cell design, efficient thermal management, and various smart charging control strategies.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

The ideal MEGA features the Kirin 5C battery. It optimizes the cell materials at the microscopic level. This improves the lithium ion transmission paths. The battery achieves high-rate performance. In low temperatures, its charging rate exceeds traditional 2C cells by over 100%.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Use the Kirin architecture. Create a battery thermal management system with a large heat exchange area. A larger heat exchange area helps dissipate excess heat quickly in summer. It also improves battery heating speed in winter. This allows the battery to reach the optimal 5C fast charge temperature in a short time.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Traditional cooling solutions place a solid cold plate at the bottom of the battery box. They rely on a small area at the bottom of the cell for heat exchange. This limits cooling and heating efficiency. The Ideal MEGA battery pack removes the solid bottom cold plate. The Kirin architecture inserts liquid cooling plates between each row of cells. This creates a “sandwich” structure. Each cell can exchange heat through a large area of the casing and the coolant. The total heat exchange area increases fivefold compared to the original bottom cooling solution. Additionally, the vehicle’s innovative “self-produced and self-sold” heat pump technology provides strong heating capability. The Ideal MEGA’s Kirin 5C battery can heat at a rate of 1.2°C per minute, even in extremely low temperatures of -10°C.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

In battery heating, controlling the timing and extra energy consumption is crucial. To simplify charging for users, Ideal Automotive designed a smart pre-cooling and pre-heating algorithm. After setting the navigation route to a supercharging station, the vehicle adjusts the battery pre-heating time and water temperature based on the battery’s real-time status and the station’s distance. This ensures the battery reaches the optimal temperature range upon arrival. The development of the smart algorithm involved over 2,000 vehicle tests. The team iterated the model continuously. They now achieve a temperature control accuracy of less than 1°C, ensuring the best charging temperature with minimal heating energy consumption.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto

Since the delivery of the Ideal MEGA began, Ideal Auto noticed that many users prefer to charge their vehicles fully. Many fast charging users charge their batteries to 95%. However, due to the battery’s chemical properties, charging speed slows after 80%, increasing charging time. Ideal Auto made three innovations to its core charging control strategy. These innovations significantly improved control accuracy in voltage, current, and temperature. They further enhanced the charging performance of the battery cells. After the upgrade, charging from 10% to 95% now takes only 17 minutes, a 5-minute reduction. Even at 95% charge, the charging power remains above 100kW. In the rapidly advancing era of new energy vehicles, the logic and technology of car manufacturing differ from those of traditional fuel vehicles. Manufacturers must adapt to new challenges by integrating user scenarios into their improvements and innovations. Winter low temperatures present a typical scenario for new energy vehicles. Ideal Auto’s proposed issues and solutions offer valuable insights for the entire industry. Finally, we present a winter driving guide for everyone.

Winter Driving Tips & Innovations: Enhance Your EV Experience with Li Auto