Collection

Special Issue: LaserEMobility 2023 – Lasers as enabling manufacturing tools in e-mobility

Submission status
Open
Open for submission from
19 January 2023
Submission deadline
Ongoing

The ever growing demand in e-vehicles in the world will result in a significant socio-economical change. The electrification changes the material types, usage, and manufacturing along with the vehicle design. The contemporary e-drives are being used in a variety of vehicles such as automobiles, drones, trains, airplanes, and ships. These vehicles will require lower weight, longer drive range, and faster recharging as the numbers of vehicles in use increase. Compared to combustion engine vehicles in an e-vehicle typically fewer number of components will be placed with an increase of demand in flexible welding, heat treatment, cutting, trimming, and texturing applications. Concerning the automotive field, the whole plants will need to adapt to the reduction of components and the necessity to weld more parts. The need for rapid changes in the vehicle models and the variety in the components will be resolved through highly digitalized, flexible, adaptable and reliable manufacturing processes. From this point of view laser based manufacturing is the essential solution, placing this family of processes as the conventional method in e-vehicle manufacturing. Today lasers are already used in a variety of applications such as hairpin stripping and welding, cutting and texturing of Li-ion electrodes, welding of battery busbars, and cutting of composite materials. The rapid reduction of the costs of the laser sources, optics, and components in the last decade facilitated the adoption of lasers e-vehicle manufacturing. Although the laser technology has shown to have reached the required maturity the system developers and the end-users still need to catch up with the pace of the growing demand in e-vehicle manufacturing. The special issue aims to address the current developments in the field.

The next decade will see an increased use of electric vehicles. Laser-based manufacturing methods are key for an efficient and high-quality electric vehicle production. The articles will cover application-oriented topics over the whole field of laser material processing for electromobility, including:

• Battery cell and system manufacturing

• Processing of new battery materials and technologies

• Electric drivetrain manufacturing

• Fuel cell manufacturing

• Lightweight construction

• Process monitoring and control

• Digitalization and data-driven process optimization

• Sustainable electric vehicle manufacturing

Articles will undergo all of the journal's standard peer review and editorial processes outlined in its submission guidelines.

Editors

Articles (9 in this collection)