Translation

Author: Nange

e Platform 3.0, the cradle of the next generation of electric vehicles.

Yesterday, BYD announced its August sales, which unsurprisingly hit a new high, with a total of 174,915 units sold for its DM and EV models, a year-on-year increase of 155.2%.

This is amazing! The entire line is seeing red, and every new model that is released becomes a hit. Today, BYD has become the leading enterprise in China’s new energy vehicle industry.

What is even more breathtaking is that monthly sales of nearly 200,000 units are far from BYD’s ceiling. For this automaker that was one of the first to bet on new energy vehicles, this may only be the beginning of its comprehensive entry into the new energy vehicle market.

As we all know, the current hybrid models are just transitional products from the fuel-powered era to the pure electric era. They are not the most important role in the century-long reform of the automotive industry. Only by having an outstanding, scalable, and technologically comprehensive pure electric vehicle platform can automakers ensure that they can run faster and farther in the future new energy race.

With this in mind, BYD began developing a pure electric vehicle architecture that is highly scalable and inspires the entire industry to deeply consider automotive technology and transformation —— e Platform 3.0 —— many years ago.

What is e Platform 3.0?

e Platform 3.0 is a pure electric vehicle exclusive platform that BYD has spent five years and billions of dollars to develop.

The platform is based on the development logic of advanced intelligent auxiliary driving, optimizing the efficiency of integrated resource utilization, and improving the safety of the entire vehicle. It further modularizes and systematizes the black technology that BYD has accumulated in the field of new energy vehicles, ensuring compatibility with front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, and all-wheel drive layouts. From the chassis layer, high-voltage layer, low-voltage layer, to the whole vehicle architecture development, it has broken through the performance shortcomings of electric vehicles, endowing them with high-level intelligent evolution capabilities and further tapping their potential for intelligence and electrification.

It is worth mentioning that e Platform 3.0 can not only create a model with extreme experience, but also incubate various sizes of intelligent electric vehicles, achieving comprehensive coverage from A-class to D-class vehicles. The Dolphin, a model with monthly sales of over 20,000 units, is the first model born based on the e Platform 3.0 architecture.

How “smart” is the experience?If you have interacted with “smart cars” nowadays, I believe you can more or less realize that the gameplay of pure electric cars and fuel vehicles is completely different.

In the era of fossil fuel vehicles that is about to pass, people pay more attention to the stability of the three major components of cars, or whether the fuel economy is higher or lower. However, in the era of pure electric vehicles, the stability and economy of these car performance are only the most basic, and what really affects consumers’ choices is often the smart experience, which includes intelligent assisted driving systems and intelligent car control operating systems.

BYD believes that the ultimate form of intelligent driving is to free the driver’s hands, assist the driver and passengers, avoid potential road or driving risks, and achieve a “no dead angle” safe automatic driving. Under the standard of “safety without blind spots”, the e-platform 3.0 continuously updates and iterates to break the limitations of previous algorithms, and reserves various hardware interfaces for all kinds of autonomous driving, which can flexibly configure the world’s top autonomous driving solutions.

To solve the problems of small computation power, low efficiency, and difficult coordination in the distributed electronic and electrical architecture, the e-platform 3.0 will be real-time co-controlled by four highly integrated domain controllers, including the car control domain, power domain, driving domain, and cabin domain.

After these four functional modules are deeply integrated and co-controlled, the most prominent advantage is that it can shorten the interaction response time of the area control, and bring users a smoother, extremely “smart” experience.

Moreover, it is necessary to highlight the self-developed car control operating system BYD OS by BYD.

The all-new BYD OS provides a basic hardware calling operation platform for global developers, and the software and hardware are completely decoupled. At the same time, the system is also a bridge for the underlying hardware to communicate with users, which needs to integrate various software applications and adapt to the necessary basis for centralized electronic and electrical architecture, which is the key to the digital transformation of automobiles.

With the new domain-controlled electronic and electrical architecture, BYD OS can achieve the core capability of fully decoupling software from hardware and supporting advanced driving development, and shorten the function iteration cycle by 70%. It can achieve the plug-and-play of application programs across hardware, software cross-platform universal, efficient OTA makes intelligent electric vehicles continue to evolve, and always keep up with new things.

Global developers can call the vehicle’s execution function and data based on the standard interface of OS, and the speed of application development, iteration, and user experience will make a qualitative leap.

Optimizing resources, improving efficiency

The development logic of e-platform 3.0 has incorporated energy efficiency considerations into the integration and innovation of the entire vehicle system, establishing an efficient design and development system across all levels from the vehicle, system to components. This has broken down the boundaries between different systems such as driving, charging, and thermal management, and aims to improve the efficient use of vehicle resources, enabling electric vehicles to have stronger capabilities, lower energy consumption, longer range, and larger space.

Returning to the level of automobile products, e-platform 3.0 empowers a pure electric vehicle with a more powerful electric powertrain. And the e-platform 3.0 architecture is no exception. To achieve deep integration of the power system, BYD has developed and introduced the world’s first mass-produced pure electric powertrain called the “8-in-1 Electric Powertrain.”

Thanks to its high integration, this 8-in-1 powertrain from BYD can achieve a peak power output of 270 kW, peak torque of 360 N·m, and maximum rotational speed of 16,000 r/min with a single motor.

As a practical example, the Dolphin EV model based on the e-platform 3.0 architecture, equipped with the 8-in-1 powertrain, can achieve a peak power output of 230 kW, peak torque of 360 N·m, and 0-100 km/h acceleration time of 3.8 seconds for the four-wheel-drive version.

In addition, BYD has revealed that the 8-in-1 powertrain will receive further evolution in the near future, enabling vehicles to achieve 0-100 km/h acceleration time of 2.9 seconds.

Self-demands, designing and developing according to the “Super Five-Star” Safety Standard

Safety has always been a top concern for electric vehicles.

This is also one of the most important aspects for BYD, who has always embraced the philosophy that ensuring safety is the greatest luxury of an electric vehicle.

Under this philosophy, BYD requires that e-platform 3.0 be designed and developed according to the “Super Five-Star” Safety Standard, with an aim to promote the sustainable development of the new energy vehicle industry.

The revolutionary aspect of E Platform 3.0 is that it incorporates the power battery as a part of the power transmission path. Equipped with blade batteries that can withstand both collisions and needle-puncture tests, E Platform 3.0 reveals one of its best-kept secrets—the enhancement of electric vehicle safety performance.

To fully unleash the potential of blade batteries, E Platform 3.0 adopts CTB battery-body integration technology. By linking blade battery packs rigidly to the body, the entire system is integrated seamlessly, replacing the traditional body-floor design. Thus, with EV floor (cell cap) – cell – tray incorporated with the body, a “vehicle sandwich” of high strength is formed.

Direct benefits of the “vehicle sandwich” construct first lie in the optimized power transmission path. This greatly improves battery safety, overall vehicle safety, and battery capacity.

Secondary advantages include enhanced torsional rigidity. After blade battery packs are integrated with the car body, the vehicle torsional stiffness can reach 40,000 N.m/°.

Thirdly, the structure offers high levels of tightness. CTB technology brings innovative design to the body-battery seal, integrating the seal as a part, and improving tightness accuracy significantly, clearly enhancing seal effectiveness. Moreover, the seal effect was tested under 21 different conditions, lasting 5000 hours over a mileage of more than 1 million kilometers, demonstrating the outstanding sealing effectiveness of the CTB construct.

The Cradle of Next-Generation Electric Vehicles

BYD is recognized as a leading enterprise in China’s new energy vehicle industry not only because of its massive sales volume but also for its commitment to delivering a rapidly developing, high-quality new energy vehicle industry. Based on safety, efficiency, and intelligence, E Platform 3.0 serves as an essential solution for next-generation intelligent electric vehicles. BYD has committed to incubating intelligent EVs for users who can “click to buy and rest assured about driving,” thus becoming the cradle of the next generation of electric vehicles.

Furthermore, in order to jointly promote the rapid and healthy development of new energy vehicles, BYD promises to share E Platform 3.0 technology with the industry comprehensively.

A single company may be strong, but only with a strong industry can the entire industry truly become invincible. Being at the forefront of the century’s greatest reform of the automotive industry, BYD will inspire the entire industry deeply with profound contemplations on automotive technology and form changes, thereby becoming the leading enterprise in China’s new energy vehicle industry.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.