Keep It Cool - A Thermal Simulation Study of the TESLA Model 3 Cell

This presentation was made at the NAFEMS Americas Conference "Simulation in the Automotive Industry: Creating the Next Generation Vehicle" held on the 16-18 March 2021.

The automotive engineering community is now confronting the largest technology transformation since its inception. The demand to manufacture cleaner, safer, and smarter vehicles, along with providing an overall enhanced driving and ride experience, has never been higher. As a result, engineering teams must discover, evaluate, and successfully implement leading-edge technology and methods to produce reliable, effective results.

Hence, the challenges for automotive engineers are enormous and require a significant increase in the upfront use of numerical simulation capabilities, methods, and processes such that they’re able to efficiently design, manufacture and deliver these innovative technologies to market in greater speeds than ever before.

Resource Abstract

Electric vehicle battery system development is complicated and presents numerous challenges. The skepticism of many customers towards electromobility is highly driven by their concern over long battery charging times. The automotive manufacturer who solves this problem and provides fast charging without aging the battery, will procure substantial market share.



Our experts will introduce a battery modeling and simulation-based approach that strictly follows the cell physics. By using a physical, parameterized and validated battery cell model, the anode surface potential is precisely controlled to avoid the dominant aging mechanism of lithium-plating. With that, we derive a feasible development method to calculate fast-charging strategies efficiently, and cope with the various levels of complexity.