The domestic electric drive of the MEB platform rolled off the assembly line at Magna, and Volkswagen's domestic electric vehicles are very close to us

Just last week, a small celebration ceremony was held in Shanghai Baoshan Industrial Park. After two years of project development and factory construction, Huayu Magna put its first electric drive system into production in China. This electric drive system will be used for Volkswagen's global electric vehicle platform (MEB platform) project.

HUAYU Magna puts its first electric drive system into production in China

The launch of this product means that the equipment installation and commissioning work at the HUAYU Magna production site has been completed, and the company has initially acquired the capacity to mass produce the electric drive system assembly for the MEB project. At the launch site, in addition to local leaders and Magna executives, SAIC Group Chairman Chen Hong also attended the ceremony, after all, this is a matter for the SAIC Volkswagen MEB family.

SAIC Volkswagen MEB Factory

At the end of August, we went to Shanghai Jiading Anting to visit the SAIC Volkswagen MEB factory under construction. After only 10 months of construction, we saw that the main construction of the factory had been basically completed, and the stamping, body, paint, assembly and battery assembly workshops had all started equipment installation.

All equipment of the Volkswagen MEB factory is scheduled to be installed in October this year, and the first trial production prototype will officially roll off the production line in November. In Shanghai, in addition to Tesla's Chinese factory, the Volkswagen MEB factory also demonstrated the "Chinese speed".

The distance from Baoshan Industrial Park on the Yangtze River to the SAIC Volkswagen MEB factory in Anting, Jiading is less than 40 kilometers and the driving time is less than an hour. This is the arrival time of one of the most important components of the MEB platform - the electric drive system.

Magna Exteriors DexSys Plant

At the end of 2017, AutoLab visited the Magna Exterior DexSys plant in Lansing, Michigan, a $98 million Magna plant that supplies GM with the ability to assemble and manufacture more than 1 million bumpers per year.

The DexSys factory is located right between two GM factories. As long as the GM factory places an order two hours in advance, the assembled car front face will be quickly sent to the OEM.

What I want to say is that all the auto giants who have their own factories have such a professional division of labor and very efficient integration of their factories and supporting parts suppliers. This is not only the case with Volkswagen MEB, but also with Tesla. Compared with the OEM production methods of some new car manufacturers in China, Volkswagen is advanced and efficient!

So what is an electric drive system? We know that in addition to the battery pack, the main components of electric vehicles also include electric motors, electronic control systems, and reducers for high-speed electric motors. Some high-end electric vehicles also have independent gearboxes.

Traditional "oil-to-electric" electric vehicles use a separate design for the motor and control system

In some of the previous "oil-to-electric" self-owned brand electric vehicles, the above components are all separated. When you open the hood, you can see the electric motor and the electronic control system placed on the motor. These components are inefficient and must rely on the cooling fan of traditional fuel vehicles to dissipate heat. This backward model will definitely be eliminated.

In the newly designed pure electric platforms, including the Audi e-tron and Jaguar I-PACE based on Volkswagen's MEB platform, they all use a highly integrated electric drive system that combines motors, electronic controls and reducers.

Volkswagen MEB platform

The advantage of the electric drive system is that it has high efficiency, light weight, low noise and other characteristics while being significantly smaller in size, taking into account both power and economy. But why do only a small number of advanced electric vehicles on the market use electric drive systems? Because the biggest difficulty in the application of "three-in-one" electric drive is whether "1+1+1>3" can be achieved.

These include integration, NVH, heat dissipation and lubrication requirements, as well as more ingenious structural design and other capabilities. This is also the reason why there are only a handful of mass-produced models on the market equipped with a "three-in-one" electric drive system.

HUAYU Magna also said: "We also encountered many challenges, including size, weight, efficiency, cooling, noise, including NVH characteristics, etc." In order to solve the most difficult heat dissipation problem, HUAYU Magna applied the "water cooling + oil cooling" technology to this product for the first time, improving the cooling performance of the product.

Jaguar I-PACE is also a pure electric platform, produced by Magna

Since 2011, Magna has been engaged in the research and development of complete electric and hybrid vehicle drive systems, with a product portfolio ranging from traditional power, 48-volt products to pure electric drive. So what are the specific performance parameters of the electric drive assembly supplied for Volkswagen's MEB platform electric vehicles?

Although Magna did not provide specific models for Volkswagen MEB, it also mentioned that this is a "highly integrated low-power electric drive system." In June last year, AutoLab also visited the Getrag headquarters in Germany with Magna, and the full range of electric drive systems were shown to us at that time.

Magna's low-power electric drive system is designed for all-wheel drive models, HEV models and small EV models. It adopts a coaxial design with an auxiliary shaft, an induction motor and an integrated high-voltage inverter and oil cooling device. Its maximum power is 76kW (for 60 seconds), and the whole system weighs only 55kg.

It is understandable that this is an electric drive system for economical fuel vehicles, because the maximum power of the current Volkswagen Lavida pure electric vehicle based on the fuel platform has reached 100kW. So at this time we know that the first electric vehicle put into production by SAIC Volkswagen MEB factory must be an economical model, and it is much more efficient than the Lavida on the fuel platform.

Currently, Huayu Magna was jointly established by Huayu Automotive and Magna. In addition to supplying the SAIC Volkswagen MEB factory, the electric drive system that rolled off the production line this time will also be supplied in batches to Volkswagen's European factory in Germany, SAIC Volkswagen and FAW-Volkswagen in the second half of 2020. In the early stage, it will cover a number of MEB platform pure electric models of the Volkswagen and Audi brands.

In addition, HUAYU Magna's platform-based electric drive products and main and auxiliary drive four-wheel drive solutions can meet the power requirements of different models. In addition to the German Volkswagen MEB project, the customer list also includes General Motors BEV3 and other models.

As new energy vehicle models move closer to pure electric vehicles, from the market perspective, the trend of electric drive system integration is accelerating the industry reshuffle, and highly integrated electric drive systems such as "three-in-one" have become mainstream.

If the engines of traditional fuel vehicles are developed by major OEMs, but the gearboxes are provided by Aisin, ZF, Magna Getrag, etc., then in the future electric drive system brands of electric vehicles, there is a high probability that Magna, Bosch, BorgWarner and other names will appear.