Wheel Concepts for Extending the Range of Battery-EVs and Upgrading the Premium Wheel Design

The transformation from vehicles with combustion engines to electric drives influences the wheel development of OEMs. This paper shows how the “optimal compromise” between engineering, design and cost is changing due to the relatively heavy batteries and the recuperation possibility of kinetic energy. Higher wheel loads and significantly higher aerodynamic demands also change the design of the wheels. However, since wheels are one of the most important design elements of a vehicle, it is necessary to develop concepts to make these wheels more attractive without significantly increasing the wheel weights. Visible genuine alloy, in which the machining process may also be visible, e.g. in the case of polished wheels, still stands for high-priced wheels. Bright machined casting-wheels with good aerodynamic properties are usually extremely heavy. Therefore, plastic panels are increasingly being used, which are either screwed, glued, or clamped. With panels made of formed aluminum sheets, which are back injected with plastic, one comes a good step closer to this goal. However, the forming possibilities and the surface design are very limited, since aluminum sheets tend to crack during forming in the case of large deformations. The company Ulbrichts GmbH in Austria has developed a process that uses generic alloy with extremely precisely manufactured wheel panels with real alloy in such a way that they are no longer distinguishable from classically mechanically manufactured parts. As a result, high-quality, acceptable priced, lightweight wheels can be produced. At the end wheels with this panels fulfill the highest requirements for premium OEMs and contribute significantly to increasing the range of electric vehicles.