Pack Volumetric Energy Density is the total nominal energy of the battery pack divided by the volume it occupies.
The battery pack volumetric energy density is a simple calculation:
The easiest is to perhaps just look at the best and worst of the Wh/litre values:
- 396 Wh/litre Mercedes Vision EQXX
- 350 Wh/litre Zeekr 001 (140kWh)
- 266 Wh/litre Rivian R1T (2023)
- 194 Wh/litre Audi Q4 e-tron 50 Quattro (2021)
- 49 Wh/litre Nissan Leaf (2010)
However, the battery pack volumetric energy density is not so easy to pin down when benchmarking as the volume of the envelope is not often given. Sometimes overall dimensions are defined for the packs, but they tend to be maximums and hence the calculated volume is larger than the actual outer pack envelope.
This means the pack gravimetric energy density is often more reliable. This is where statistical data from lots of packs can be useful.
If we look at this plot then perhaps we can see an upper and lower trend. This might be useful at the early design stage to set a range for the volume. These trends would be much tighter if we filtered out the older battery packs, this can be done with the excel version of the pack database.
This post has been built based on the support and sponsorship from: Thermo Fisher Scientific, Eatron Technologies, About:Energy and Quarto Technical Services.
Another important plot is the Pack Volumetric Energy Density compared to the Cell Volumetric Energy Density. This effectively gives a packaging efficiency.
The slope of the line of best fit is 0.3309 and hence 33% packing efficiency.
Battery Pack Database
This excel download contains all of the data we have shown here and lots more.