Lighter vehicles need less energy to travel the same distance. Hydro designs and manufactures aluminum components for electric and hybrid vehicles, from battery enclosures to the busbars and cables that carry their power.
Maintaining excellent crash-worthiness, our modular aluminum solutions for electric vehicle battery packs can lower costs in production and operation and offer maximum design flexibility.
Aluminum plays a significant role in making electric and hybrid vehicles lighter. Hydro components made from aluminum for EVs include battery packs and enclosure frame solutions for all electric vehicles. Other products include SC-13® busbars, aluminum battery cables, heat sink systems, motor housings, cabin heaters and structural body components.
Everything that carries current in an electric vehicle adds weight. An aluminum conductor weighs roughly half as much as a copper conductor with the same conductivity, which makes aluminum a strong option for busbars, battery cables and high-voltage connections.
Aluminum on its own is not the only contributor to good conductivity. Factors like alloy choice, profile geometry and the extrusion process all affect how well a part carries current and gets rid of heat. Extrusion also lets you design the electrical and mechanical job into one profile, with connection points and cooling surface exactly where you need them.
Our SC-13® busbars and aluminum battery cables work alongside our battery enclosures to cut weight and cost across the vehicle's power system. aluminum is also a good fit for electric vehicle charging stations.
When you use greener materials such as low-carbon aluminum, you will improve the footprint of your electric vehicle, not only in the production of the vehicle, but in its use phase.
With the move to electrification, the materials footprint of a car will soon be more important than the tailpipe emissions. We know sustainability is one of the drivers for choosing electric vehicles. That is why Hydro is developing materials and producing them in the right way, to ensure you receive what you need to meet your sustainability targets. aluminum is completely and infinitely recyclable, with no loss of properties.
Hydro CIRCAL is our range of products made with recycled, post-consumer scrap. Using recycled aluminum, Hydro is able to drastically reduce energy use in the production phase while still being able to offer high-quality aluminum products.
Operating the most advanced aluminum sorting technology in the industry allows Hydro CIRCAL to provide some of the highest recycled content aluminum in the market. Currently we offer Hydro CIRCAL 75R that contains a minimum of 75% post-consumer scrap. The higher the recycled content, the lower the carbon footprint.
Find out more about Hydro CIRCAL recycled aluminum here.
Hydro REDUXA is our series of low-carbon aluminum. By using renewable energy sources like hydro power, Hydro REDUXA reduces the carbon footprint to 4kg CO2e per kg of aluminum (less than a fourth of the global average). The result is aluminum with one of the world’s lowest carbon footprints – maximizing sustainable opportunities for our customers in the automotive industry.
Using renewable energy from water, wind and solar, Hydro can produce cleaner aluminum than ever before.
