Honda Is Propelling Forward in the EV and eVTOL Race

In the world of vehicles, Honda is a household name. Founded in 1948, they’ve been the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, they produce millions of internal combustion engines (ICEs) every year, and they’re the eighth largest automobile manufacturer in the world. For their future line of vehicles, Honda is looking at electrical vehicles (EVs) and electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles.

eVTOLs, also known as flying cars, are said to be the future of air mobility, but numerous airflow complexities are involved in their development. For EVs and eVTOLs, aerodynamic performance plays a crucial role in increasing battery life. It’s also essential to reduce aerodynamic drag while maintaining the authentic styling of the vehicle’s exterior. To address these challenges, Honda uses Cadence’s Millennium M1 Multiphysics Supercomputing Platform and Fidelity CFD Large Eddy Simulation (LES) Solver to optimize the design process.

When comparing eVs to ICEs, you don’t want to give up the range, cost, or styling to secure the battery space. According to Atsushi Ogawa, Chief Operating Officer at Honda R&D and formerly the lead aerodynamics engineer at Honda, optimizing the exterior styling while keeping the drag to a minimum is a step-by-step approach. An investment of $1 million can lead to a 1% reduction in aerodynamic drag.

For eVTOL vehicles, thousands of calculations need to be made for optimization and to guarantee the vehicle’s different postures in hover and cruise modes. Airflow around flying cars is complex, and there’s lots of interference between the rotors and the wings. Honda has been solving these challenges with the Cadence Millennium M1 and Fidelity CFD Software, as they guarantee performance and speed.

“Honda and Cadence have worked together for more than 10 years to accelerate CFD design processes,” stated Ogawa. “Our deployment of Cadence’s Millennium M1 multiphysics supercomputing platform, with its LES solver, has demonstrated significantly faster turnaround time and the scalability to simulate much larger systems for aerodynamics, combustion, and aeroacoustics applications for our automotive, aeropropulsion, and eVTOL projects. With the potential for significant acceleration of high-fidelity CFD simulations, we look forward to continuing our collaboration to develop next-generation CFD solutions.”

Learn more about how Honda is propelling forward in the EV and eVTOL Race with Cadence CFD.

“Designed with Cadence” is a series of videos that showcases creative products and technologies that are accelerating industry innovation using Cadence tools and solutions. For more Designed with Cadence videos, check out the Cadence website and YouTube channel.