General Motors is banking a good chunk of its future on its electric car, the Volt. Along those lines, the ailing automaker inked a pact to accelerate the design and testing of advanced batteries for electric vehicles.
In a deal signed with the University of Michigan (U-M), the five-year, $5-million award establishes the GM/U-M Advanced Battery Coalition for Drivetrains (ABCD), headquartered at U-M.
ABCD will accelerate the development of advanced batteries by conducting cutting-edge experiments and simulations to better understand and resolve issues related battery life and performance.
“Our shared ambition is to see electrified drive trains in a large number of vehicle types and applications. That means we need to reduce the design cycle in both time and cost. Working with GM allows us to make an impact on large-scale production electric drive vehicles, and develop regularized, simulations- and knowledge-based methodologies for using batteries in drivetrains,” said Ann Marie Sastry, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Mechanical, Biomedical and Materials Science and Engineering at U-M, and U-M’s co-director of the ABCD.
ABCD is the latest in a series of collaborative efforts between the university and GM. The auto manufacturer works closely with the College of Engineering in the Energy Systems Engineering Master’s degree program. This program creates the workforce necessary for a smooth transition to a time when automobiles and the electric grid interface on a regular basis.
“Advanced battery technologies have quickly become a competitive advantage in the auto industry,” said Bob Kruse, executive director global vehicle engineering hybrids, electric vehicles and batteries, and GM’s co-director of the ABCD. “We aim to speed insertion of new technology, accelerate product design, and contribute to the cohort of automotive engineers and battery researchers who will shape our industry.”
Batteries are the most important part of the electric drivetrain, Sastry said, but they have not undergone exhaustive research in the automotive world because of their limited role in gas-powered vehicles. This grant will allow Sastry and her colleagues to optimize batteries and predict how the batteries will behave over time.
As part of the Energy Systems Engineering program, students intern at GM. Last summer, several worked on Volt research. This semester, 50 GM engineers are a part of the program for a total of 75 students.
“We are deliberately creating linkages between educating knowledge workers and developing the underpinning science and technology,” Sastry said. “We want to build this infrastructure so that we can produce meaningful technical results that move quickly to application.”