An Italian-British collaboration that will give rise to high-level premium electric vehicles: it is the snapshot of the newly formed partnership between Italdesign and Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE), which will give life to a range of high-performance battery-powered vehicles that will range from GT to crossover, up to sedans. At the basis of the project is WAE’s innovative electrical architecture: a light and modular structure, which integrates the batteries with elements commonly perceived as parts of the bodywork and the structure.
“The front and rear of the frame mount directly on the carbon composite case, in this way the shock loads can be dissipated thanks to the internal reinforcements in the integrated side sills”, reads an official note: “The resulting cross section it has a higher profile and is capable of achieving much of the torsional stiffness needed to deliver the platform’s full potential. These two design philosophies reduce dependence on the upper structure, thus offering greater freedom of design and engineering for different top hats ”.
To all this, the Italdesign engineers integrated the safety systems and structures, finalizing the modular platform that will be the basis for the construction of different types of vehicles. A “production-ready” platform ready to meet the needs and desires of each brand in terms of market positioning, marketing and design. The new platform is able to support production up to 10,000 units, 500 of which can be assembled internally by Italdesign. The battery pack is capable of delivering 1000kW of power and boasts 104-160kWh of capacity and up to 1000km of range. Finally, the platform – made by combining recycled materials with aluminum – can accommodate architectures with wheelbases from 2.9 to 3.1 meters, allowing customers to choose between rear or all-wheel drive mechanics.
“The demand for high-performance electric vehicles is growing considerably but, until now, there has been no complete solution for production,” explains in an official note Paul McNamara, Technical Director of WAE: “This unique partnership brings together the technology of state-of-the-art rolling chassis for EV with one of the world leaders in vehicle engineering development. We will be able to support both new players in bringing halo electric vehicles to the market, and established OEMs in low to medium volume production of high performance models, with turnkey projects across the board, including homologation. “
“With fifty-three years of experience in design and engineering development, our role within this partnership will be the advancement of the rolling chassis developed by WAE towards complete platform and modeling in line with the architecture, body style. and the contents defined with customers “, says Antonio Casu, Chief Technical Officer of Italdesign:” Over the last fifty years we have developed skills and extensive experience in “turnkey” projects, able to understand and meet the needs of customers who are established international builders or start-ups. Our goal is to develop architectures in the GT, sedan, crossover and spider segments, which are fully customizable both outside and inside ”.
