CATL designs a secure, modular chassis platform for electric vehicles

Safety in electromobility CATL designs a secure, modular chassis platform for electric vehicles

2025-01-07 From Susanne Braun | Translated by AI 2 min Reading Time

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With the Bedrock Chassis, battery manufacturer CATL has developed a chassis specifically for electric vehicles that is designed to secure the battery in such a way that no fires or explosions occur at impact speeds of up to 74.56 mph. This could mean a new level of safety for electromobility.

The developers at CATL had the Bedrock chassis crash into a wall and a column with a body at 74.56 mph.(Image: CATL) — The developers at CATL had the Bedrock chassis crash into a wall and a column with a body at 74.56 mph.
(Image: CATL)

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL) introduced its modular chassis platform Bedrock before the turn of the year. It is a skateboard chassis that, according to the manufacturer, is designed to address the challenges of electromobility and is intended to make it safer.

The high resilience of the chassis has been demonstrated by CATL developers with several crash tests. In impact tests at a speed of 74.56 mph head-on against a wall and a pole, there were neither explosions nor fires in the battery—even after twelve hours of the vehicle being stationary. This is made possible, among other things, by the "three-dimensional biomimetic turtle-shell structure, where the body and frame of the energy unit are integrated and closely connected to provide resilient protection to the energy unit," as CATL engineers emphasize. An impact at 74.56 mph corresponds to a fall from a building with a height of 183.73 feet.

Protection for the battery, platform for EVs

For the chassis, hot-formed steel with a strength of 2,000 MPa and aluminum alloys with a strength of 600 MPa were used, among other materials. As the crash test video shows, no dummies were used in the tests. CATL developers emphasize that the chassis would be capable of absorbing about 85 percent of the collision energy—this, of course, serves to protect the occupants but primarily the battery of the electric vehicle.

The focus of the Bedrock platform on battery protection is also evident in the following: "An immediate shutdown of the high-voltage circuit is achieved within 0.01 seconds after impact, and the discharge of the remaining high-voltage energy in the vehicle within 0.2 seconds."

Bedrock is modularly constructed and decoupled from the body, allowing electric vehicle manufacturers to reduce the design phase for a new model. CATL forecasts that the time to mass production of a model will be reduced to 12 to 18 months. The chassis supports mechanical decoupling, software decoupling, and EE decoupling, thus enabling intelligent driving from L3 to L4. At the launch event of the Bedrock chassis, officials from automaker AVATR emphasized their interest in furthering work with Bedrock through a letter of intent. (sb)

As early as November 2023, Stellantis and CATL had signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding for the local supply of LFP battery cells and modules for the production of electric vehicles in Europe. Now the planned joint venture is taking shape. (Image:Stellantis)

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Date: 08.12.2025

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