5 Takeaways from the AGMA EV Town Hall

AGMA hosted an EV Town Hall last month during their Motion + Power Technology Expo (MPT Expo). This event was planned to explicitly ask the question, “Is industry ready to roll up its sleeves and start the process of sharing common outcomes that will serve as the building blocks for standards for electric vehicle technology?” Spoiler Alert: The answer was a resounding, yes. And the discussion uncovered some key issues, and perhaps a surprise or two, that will help AGMA leverage its 107 years of experience in this space to start to frame future discussions for electric vehicle standards development.

The morning started as it should with leaders of industry talking from the podium. Michael Cinquemani, CEO of Master Power Transmission, and current Chairman of the AGMA Board of Directors was sandwiched between AGMA staff leaders in emerging tech and technical standards development. Michael was the right bridge between the work of these two groups and the perfect person to ask the question: Are we ready? “As all of us in the room understand, electric vehicle technology is an exponentially growing sector with many opportunities,” he said. “As Chair of the AGMA Electric Vehicle Technology Committee, I have watched this industry develop over the last five years from the electric compact cars and the Tesla roadsters being the only vehicles to a sea change with all the major automobile manufacturers. We see a multitude of new players around the world building fully electric and hybrid-electric vehicles.” He went on to say, “I believe that we are at the inflection point where standards discussions need to start.”

AGMA had provided in advance a list of current standards that would apply to this sector—and could be a reference through the town hall discussions. These standards were organized around the topics of design, rating, and load calculation; metallurgy and materials; accuracy, tolerancing, and inspection; manufacturing and inspection; and wear and failure. A link to download the document is available at the end of this piece. More than 100 in attendance used this as a springboard for their robust conversation.

Here are some quick takeaways:

1. Industry is ready to talk standards for gearing in Electric Vehicles.

While the four following points are important, let’s not bury the lead on this one. AGMA’s biggest takeaway from the event is that industry is ready to talk standards. The process for standards development must, of course, begin with industry producing similar technology across a sector or multiple sectors. The AGMA emerging technology Electric Vehicle Committee has been monitoring this space for the last five years. The development of similar drivetrain technologies utilized on multiple vehicles by multiple companies and the build-out of the needed supply chains and/or internal tooling of manufacturing lines are key indicators a technology has hit mainstream and standards discussions may be beneficial.

Gear engineers showed up at this event armed with concrete examples of where they see gaps in the current standards and where they would like help with their current designs. Multiple examples of these are mentioned further down in this article.

2. Standards are still relevant!

It may be a simple sentence, but it was important to establish.

John Cross, President of ASI Drives and a past chair of the Board for AGMA came up to the microphone a short way into the discussion and asked the hard question: What do standards mean to you? He went on to clarify, “Our products are electric motor-driven gear drives for small vehicles, small equipment so I have been doing this for 25 years. Standards are very important to us. But, for the big guys here—we are talking about EVs here, we are talking about cars, we are talking about a huge industry in the US—do the big manufacturers want this? Because honestly, without them, the rest of us aren’t going to be able to push anything forward.”

As he was talking attendees were able to physically see heads shaking in the affirmative by OEM gear designers, and gear executives around the room. AGMA staff was quick to point out that in standards development there is always respect for proprietary information and an individual company’s competitive edge. It is the common ground that is discussed and pushed out as standards for a given technology.

One of the EV committee members approached the microphone. “I am glad you raised this,” he said. “I use a lot of standards. I teach standards. The software that all of us use whether it is our folks using it and then putting our proprietary juice on top of that or going to the supply base, holds very strong to the standards. Because it is a standard, it is a common language that we can all speak.” He went on to provide some examples both domestic and international, the essence of which was that if the underlying math is the same then we don’t confuse ourselves. “I try to push the use of standards as a foundation and then you do your high-volume, specialized tweak to that.”

3. We aren’t just discussing similar standards for cars, many different types of vehicles want to discuss similar EV standards.

ASI Drives works primarily on technology used in AGVs and AMRs. Borg Warner is working on drive trains. John Deere is all over the agriculture space, and Caterpillar is king of the big off-highway machines. Representatives from each of these companies not only were in attendance but were among those who contributed to the discussion alongside some of the auto engineers. In fact, at points throughout the morning, there were organic conversations between gear designers in the room. It became very apparent that there is an understanding that the need for gearboxes and electric motors applies across these diverse end-user markets. While the vehicles are very different, the physics to propel them forward naturally provides similar technology with common characteristics and common needs from standards.

Engineers were quick to point out where they would like to see some clarity or additions to current standards. One engineer was not sure if it would be a change to the design rating or NVH standard, or a connection between the two, but pointed out that their company has seen some of their own e-drive systems interact between the poles of the motors and the vibrations and system dynamics in responses downstream. Others brought up topics of inertia causing issues, and others asked for recommendations for grounding and dealing with discharge.

Several conversations started with the increasing speeds in the gearboxes. One posited the question, how close will the correlation between gear design and bearing design need to become in the future? An engineer went on to say, “a lot of times you are on the verge of high speed where the ball bearings are just not there, and you are going to have to go to angular contact or some other form of hydrodynamic bearing to make it work.” He added, “as we get up to the higher speeds, it would be good to have recommendations for that.”

One interesting clarifying point was on efficiency: “A lot of software packs now use the old ISO 14179 gearbox stuff. It is used in everything from rock crushers to paper mills, you can use it in a paper printer. Can it be used for the next generation of EVs? Maybe not to the next level as the technology pre-dates EHD theory. How can we use a friction model that pre-dates our current understanding of friction?” This was a big takeaway for AGMA.

AGMA took notes and is working on the next steps for these individual discussions.

4. Emerging technology work is relevant to help bridge the gap between emerging and developed technologies.

The work of the AGMA emerging tech committees found grounding in the discussions of the morning. The Committee work had been the impetus for the development of the EV Town Hall. Several of the emerging tech webinars were found within the discussions on software developments, gear tooth developments, and more. Additionally, there were two representatives from steel companies who came up to the microphones and bravely admitted that they needed assistance from industry to stay ahead of the needs in this space. Citing that it takes years to develop new products in their sector. EVT leaders are already working on the best way to facilitate EV steel discussions in the gear industry in 2024.

5. After 107 years, AGMA has still got it!

At the end of the hours-long discussion, the resounding final takeaway is that industry can depend on AGMA to provide the neutral ground necessary to have the tough discussions around technology standards. We will continue to work just as hard as we have to bring stakeholders together for these high-level discussions.

Please watch this space for more.

If you would like to be a part of the discussion and join in either the AGMA emerging tech committee discussions and/or the electric vehicle standards discussions, please send an email to doran@agma.org

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