Integrated product and process development for electric engine production

The public perception of electric mobility has changed recently. While OEMs ceased the R&D-operations for this subject already, SMEs still focus on innovative technologies for car traction. As these companies cannot subsidize their electric vehicles and use cost efficient conversion design derivatives, a positive Return on Engineering is necessary even for small production volumes of purpose designed cars. The electrification of the drive train is a ´task of the century´ and the substitution of combustion engines becomes inevitable in medium terms. Uncertain market trends create insecurity for producing companies regarding investments in equipment capacity. The production system elaborated in this paper presents an approach to solve three main issues of the electric traction engine production: the assessment of a specific engine technology, the definition of the technology chain for production and the use of scalable manufacturing concepts as well as intelligent automation to face changing market conditions. This approach is not only applicable to the production of an electric traction engine, but to vehicle manufacturing in general.