· 1 min read
Why twelve modules
The pack architecture decision, and the 200 kg it costs us.
Meridian
Every mainstream pack is trending toward fewer, larger, structurally bonded cells. We went the other way, and it is the most expensive decision in the car.
The arithmetic
A bonded pack is lighter, cheaper to assemble and stiffer, which lets you take weight out of the body too. Against that: when one section degrades, the unit of replacement is the whole pack, and the whole pack is most of the residual value of a ten-year-old car.
Twelve modules costs us roughly 200 kg and about 30 km of range. It buys a failure mode that is a two-hour job instead of a write-off.
What we would change
Twelve is not magic — it fell out of the floor plan. On a clean sheet we would probably choose sixteen smaller modules, at some further weight cost, because the module price is what people actually feel.