the Volvo EX60 Heralds a new era for the Swedish automobile industry. With a class-leading range of up to 400 miles, impressive charging speeds of up to 370 kW and a host of high-tech features, it is set to become Volvo’s most advanced electric car to date.
When it arrives stateside this spring, the EX60 will also put Volvo in rare company. The EX60 will join a few other electric cars such as Electric Porsche Cayenne and Tesla Model Y To use a truly advanced battery design known as “cell-to-body”.
“It’s an architectural achievement for us in terms of how the car is built,” said Anders Bell, Volvo Cars’ chief engineering and technology officer. InsideEVs In an interview at the EX60 debut event. “It’s a huge improvement, we’re saving a lot of weight, we’re saving a lot of cost, which is important because that means we can lower the price for customers and sell more battery electric cars,” he added.
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Source: Volvo
To understand why this is important, let’s step back and look at how electric car batteries are typically manufactured. Today, most automakers rely on a modular-based architecture, where individual cells are assembled into rectangular modules, which are then assembled into a battery pack bolted to the vehicle’s chassis.
For example, GM battery packs use the traditional modular approach.
It’s a flexible, proven approach used by most industries, but it comes with trade-offs in terms of complexity and space efficiency. Modules require more parts, which increases the weight of the package. Newer cell-to-pack batteries eliminate modules by stacking cells directly in the pack, resulting in better energy density and lower weight.
Volvo is pushing this concept further with the EX60 by adopting cell-to-body construction. In this design, the battery pack itself becomes a load-bearing part of the vehicle’s chassis. This means that parts of the floor integrate directly into the cells, effectively becoming part of the car’s skeleton.
Photo: Mac Hogan/InsideEVs
This approach stems from the automaker’s quest to reduce parts and weight. “We decided to standardize everything, all the modules around large prismatic cells with the ends facing down,” Bell said. “By making the battery part of the structure, we have a clever application of adhesives between the cells and on the walls, and then we seal the entire packaging,” he added.
Photo by: Volvo
This shift becomes especially clear when you look at the numbers. The EX90 gets a 111 kWh battery, of which 107 kWh is usable. That’s enough to deliver about 310 miles of EPA range. However, the top EX60 P12 AWD model gets a 117 kWh battery, of which 112 kWh is usable, and Volvo says this will provide a range of up to 400 miles.
In other words, Volvo has managed to fit more battery capacity — and unlock more range — inside a car that’s about 10 inches shorter and also has a slightly smaller wheelbase.
Porsche Cayenne Electric: The kit is integrated directly into the body and floor.
Photo by: Porsche
This is the product of a cell-to-body design combined with the newer, more space-efficient SPA3 platform, which simply packs power much more efficiently than the SPA2 architecture that powers the EX90.
According to Volvo, the cell-to-body battery improves energy density by 20%, reduces overall weight, uses less raw materials, and takes up less space inside the vehicle. The company also claims 31% faster charging and 37% lower CO2 emissions, which is a testament to how structured batteries can deliver benefits beyond just range numbers.
Photo by: Volvo
Battery servicing shouldn’t be a problem, Bell said. According to Volvo, more than 90% of battery-related service requests are related to the electronics rather than the cells themselves. On older electric cars, maintenance often requires dropping the entire assembly from the car, which is time-consuming and tedious. In contrast, in the EX60, technicians can access the battery by simply opening the case.
However, it is still early days, and the true serviceability of these batteries remains to be seen. But as Tesla, Porsche, Volvo, and a growing list of Chinese automakers move toward cell-to-cell packaging, it’s clear that the future of how batteries are packaged is the future.
Additional reporting by Mac Hogan.
Contact the author: suvrat.kothari@insideevs.com
