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On Thursday night, Cadillac introduced a new SUV, the Lyriq. It is the first electric vehicle with logo battery and the first vehicle to use General Motors’ new BEV3 platform and Ultium battery technology, which is expected to generate 22 new BEVs in the company’s logo diversity until 2023. Cadillac is rarely spilling all the grains on Lyriq yet, but shared some data with Ars before the live broadcast launch. The main figures are a diversity of “more than three hundred miles” (482 km) in a singles rate, a rapid CC rate at “more than 150 kW” and the fact that it will be available in rear-wheel and four-wheel drive configurations. .
In addition, it will feature a massive 33-inch screen on the dashboard that combines the main board and infotainment system, a two-shot augmented front-end demonstration (featuring data such as vehicle speed in the foreground and navigation). in a remote aircraft) and complex power assistance systems, adding the latest edition of Super Cruise and the ability to park remotely.
General Motors announces a new battery platform and will soon claim $100/kWh.I recently spoke to Michael Harpster, the world’s leading engineer in electric propulsion systems and gm hybrids, to receive a little more information about the new BEV3 platform and the classes from which GM has received information. previous cars such as the EV1 and Chevrolet Bolt EV. “We were doing the calculations, and you know, we have 25 years of delight in the production of electric cars, returning to the EV1. So there’s a huge history of General Motors and electric cars,” he told me, adding that his GM team still includes a couple of engineers who worked directly on the EV1, which was in production between 1996 and 1999.
However, this car is probably less applicable to Lyriq than bolt, and was curious to know what classes Harpster and his team had learned by developing this third generation electric platform. “The Bolt is a smaller car, and it’s a 60kWh package, which at the time was a big package. But with the Ultium formula, we seek to get up to 100kWh for the Lyriq. And that made us think about integrating the propulsion formula into the vehicle in a much deeper way. It’s not just about driving so much power in a car, it’s about thinking about what the visitor needs, and they need the height of this package to be as small as possible, right? I need a very thin package to maximize the internal volume,” he says.
At the same time, Lyriq’s design team had their own needs for greater flavor flexibility. “Unlike the Bolt, where there’s a double bridge [of cells] under the back seat, we made it as flat as possible and extended it to the rockers. So we did it by taking some of the details of what we did on the Bolt, but pushing it even more when the battery case is a structural detail of the car, that’s the backbone of the car. And it’s heavily incorporated into the design structurally, especially with the glass and the look of the package: those two paints as a co-design,” he explains.
Obviously, a Cadillac will have to have a different character than other GM brands. “So unique to Cadillac, surely NVH [noise, vibration and hardness]. You observe expectations about sound quality, the sound of the vehicle’s propulsion system; there was a lot of emphasis on that. Bolt, you move on to engine design and electric vehicles, and there are safe noises happening and you struggle with them. Every generation we become smarter about how to apply this in the design of our engine,” Harpster told me.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, functionality also some other key aspect. “Unlike the Bolt, where it’s a single engine unit on the front axle, so it’s just a front-wheel drive car, the Lyric is rear-wheel drive and, again, it’s a Cadillac that works like: the pitch from a front axle leads to a main rear axle, so the greatest force falls on the rear axle to give it the characteristic of a rear axle. In particular, when we move on to all-wheel drive functionality, we placed some other traction unit on the front axle,” he said, adding that the AWD edition of the Lyriq is still predominantly driven through the rear motor-generator group.
The front and rear UGCs are not identical, but “are designed as a circle of relatives. Therefore, they have attributes that are similar, but the force is quite different. So the force of the rear axle is greater,” he explained. Although it did not report much about the redesign of the BEV3 circle of engine relatives, Harpster stated that they were designed to be more effective and quieter than the Bolt EV’s MGU and that they used fewer infrequent ground elements. “Actually, it’s the trick to getting motor capabilities, without spending money on incredibly expensive magnets that use some of the heaviest and rarest land, so we’ve been quite competitive in this area,” he told me. In addition, the relatives’ motor circle has been designed to be less difficult to manufacture, with non-unusual attachment points, the front and rear ERM may not look as similar from the outside.
However, it has not been easy. “We redesigned the front powertrain – its physical orientation – 3 times, running with the vehicle equipment to check and locate the optimal configuration to give Design the flexibility of the taste he was looking for, to optimize [the performance] in the event of a collision and adapt it to place as much battery in the car in an effective package: we spend a lot of time thinking about the arrangement of the vehicle and how it holds it, a charge from the front ties or the central rails front to the drums and how to take the car from that cargo transition keeping passengers’ feet and inner area the way I was looking for it, was a challenge,” Harpster said.
Battery satisfaction is also a priority. “When you succeed in higher power densities, there are disorders that come with that in mobile management; they want a lot of care and food. That’s why a lot of power has been invested to ensure that those top nickel mobiles are processed. desire to be treated, ” he said.
Harpster is proud of the way force electronics have been integrated. “In the Lyriq’s rear transmission unit, we package the inverter into the transmission unit. In the right front transmission unit, we not only have the inverter, but also the power electronics, the DC-DC (12 V top voltage converter), the integrated charger is there, and some other components; it was a wonderful victory for the show. If you look at the amount of content we include in these pictures, it’s pretty exceptional by industry standards. The physical length and capacity of those packages is at the forefront of the industry,” he told me.
The Lyriq will go on sale for the 2023 style year (i.e. calendar year 2022). Prices will be announced closer to the time, however, we expect diversity to start at around $75,000.
Image by Cillac
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