Bosch's new EV battery management system reduces maintenance costs

    There is still a long way to go before electric vehicles can be popularized. Whether it is safety, power performance, or driving range, they still need to be further improved. Currently, Bosch is jointly conducting a 4.3 million euro research project with universities and institutions such as the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The main research content is to improve the battery performance of electric and hybrid vehicles and develop an intelligent battery management system.

    The basic principle of this technology is to use the path of current flow in the battery to exchange data and control the way signals transmit data.

    Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research will invest 2.5 million euros in research funding between now and May 2016 for the project, called "IntLiIon" (intelligent data bus concepts for lithium-ion batteries in electric and hybrid vehicles).

    The IntLilon project is focused on lithium-ion batteries. The research will focus on the power line communication system in the battery to more effectively control and monitor the battery cells in the battery pack (up to 100 battery cells can be monitored/controlled).

    Once this power line system matures, it will be able to eliminate the large number of cables used to transmit data in traditional battery systems, thereby reducing the cost of battery management systems.

    Dr. Jens Strobel, a researcher at Bosch who is in charge of the project, said that the system can monitor and control each battery cell individually. If a single lithium battery cell has a problem, such as a drop in working efficiency, then only the single battery cell needs to be replaced, without replacing the entire battery module. This greatly reduces the maintenance cost of lithium-ion batteries.