At first look, the Aria EV appears not a lot totally different than another student-built electrical prototype—no totally different than the battery-powered cars built by engineering students from dozens of universities yearly. Beneath its panels, nevertheless, is a problem to the trendy auto trade: What if electric vehicles have been designed to be repaired by their house owners?
The Aria challenge started in 2024, when roughly 20 college students assembled at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands underneath the college’s Ecomotive workforce construction, which operates like a small startup. College students apply, are chosen, and spend a yr creating a car in a setting meant to reflect trade follow.
The purpose, says workforce spokesperson Sarp Gurel, “was to make the automobile as accessible and repairable as doable.” Gurel, who graduated final July with a bachelor’s diploma in industrial engineering and is at present working towards a grasp’s diploma at Eindhoven, says the Aria EV will not be but street authorized. Its goal is to reveal that repairability may be embedded into EV structure from the outset. With that goal in thoughts, the workforce centered first on probably the most difficult and costly part in virtually any EV: the battery.
Modular Battery Design in EVs
Aria’s complete battery capability is 13 kilowatt-hours (kWh), which is way beneath the 50 to 80 kWh packs widespread in mass-market electrical sedans and SUVs. The dimensions is nearer to that of a light-weight city car or neighborhood EV, which is extra applicable for a student-built prototype centered on idea validation fairly than long-range freeway journey.
What distinguishes Aria will not be the battery’s dimension, however its construction. Quite than housing the 13 kWh in a single sealed pack, the workforce divided the full capability into six smaller modules. Every module weighs about 12 kilograms—a lot simpler to deal with than the 400 kilograms or extra that’s typical of a standard EV’s monolithic battery pack. This makes it possible for a single particular person to take away, swap, and exchange modules.
The modules sit in strengthened compartments beneath the car ground and are secured utilizing a bottom-latch system. When the car is totally powered down, a latch may be made to mechanically launch a module. Built-in interlocks isolate the high-voltage connection earlier than a module may be lowered. This mixture of {hardware} and software program ensures that component-level substitute is easy and comparatively secure, bringing the concept of “repairability by design” right into a tangible, hands-on kind. Even with this cautious design, modular batteries introduce technical issues that have to be managed, significantly when integrating totally different modules over the car’s lifespan.
Joe Borgerson, a laboratory analysis operations coordinator at Ohio State University’s Center for Automotive Research in Columbus, notes one complication: Mixing new and aged battery modules can create challenges. Borgerson has spent the previous three years designing and constructing a battery pack from scratch as a part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Battery Workforce Challenge. “Our workforce is integrating a student-designed pack right into a Stellantis car platform,” he says, “which has given me deep publicity to each automaker design philosophy and high-voltage EV structure,.”
To enhance the their automobile’s {hardware}, the Aria workforce developed a diagnostic app that may be accessed by way of a devoted USB-C port. When the consumer connects their smartphone, the app presents a 3D visualization on the telephone display screen that factors out faults, locates issues, identifies the required instruments to repair them, and gives step-by-step restore directions. The instruments themselves are saved within the car. The system goals to cut back as many limitations as doable for customers to keep up and prolong a car’s service life.
College students at Eindhoven University of Technology unveiled their Aria EV prototype in November.Sarp Gürel
Challenges of EV Modularity
Whereas Aria prioritizes modularity, the broader EV trade development is towards built-in, interdependent techniques that simplify manufacturing processes and minimize prices. This development is true for the structural battery packs for EVs as effectively.
Not like mainstream EVs, Aria treats energy storage as a replaceable subsystem. Whether or not it scales economically and structurally to bigger, highway-capable EVs stays an open query. However designing a car for repairability includes tradeoffs that ripple throughout each system within the automobile.
Borgerson says that dividing techniques into detachable models provides interfaces—mechanical fasteners, electrical connectors, seals, and security interlocks. Every interface should survive vibration, temperature swings, and crash forces. Extra interfaces can imply added mass and complexity in contrast with tightly built-in battery constructions. And these parts take up house that might in any other case be used for vitality storage.
Matilde D’Arpino, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State whose analysis focuses on electrified powertrains and superior car architectures, notes that EV batteries are already modular internally—cells kind modules, and modules kind packs—however making modules externally replaceable adjustments validation necessities. Excessive-voltage isolation, thermal efficiency, and crash integrity should stay strong even when vitality storage is split into detachable segments. In different phrases, what looks like a easy option to make batteries user-friendly really cascades into system-level design choices influencing security, thermal management, and car construction.
Right-to-repair legislation in Europe and the United States may push automakers to rethink sealed architectures for batteries and different parts. Financial incentives may additionally emerge from fleet operators or long-term house owners who profit from changing a fraction of a battery system fairly than a complete pack. However adopting this method would require adjustments throughout provide chains, certification processes, and repair fashions.
The Aria prototype isn’t able to go toe-to-toe with manufacturing EVs, but it surely demonstrates some proof-of-concept concepts about repairability.Sarp Gürel
Client expectations are additionally shaping the boundaries of what designs like Aria’s can change into. Within the mainstream market, patrons constantly prioritize longer driving range and decrease sticker costs—two components which have outlined competitors amongst fashions such because the Chevrolet Bolt EV, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, and the the Tesla Model 3. Range anxiety stays a strong psychological issue, whilst charging infrastructure expands, and worth sensitivity has intensified as government incentives fluctuate. Designing for modularity and repairability, as Aria does, should finally take care of these shopper priorities. Any added value, weight, or complexity have to be weighed towards a market that also rewards automobiles that go farther for much less cash.
Finally, nevertheless, Aria inserts a distinct precedence into the equation: restore as a core design requirement. Whether or not that precedence turns into mainstream will rely much less on whether or not it may be engineered—and extra on whether or not regulators, producers, and customers determine it ought to be.
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