A greener road ahead?
Electric vehicles are a reality, and scientists are now looking ahead. They are exploring new frontiers to make them safer, more reliable, moreElectric vehicles are a reality, and scientists are now looking ahead. They are exploring new frontiers to make them safer, more reliable, more autonomous and more affordable.
European researchers are not short of ideas to address all those issues.
An electric vehicle has, say its developers, been designed to suit all tastes. Not only because its solar cells feed its electric batteries. But also because the vehicle itself is able to provide some food.
Most cars, electric or otherwise, have boots designed to carry luggage. But one new vehicle has
microwaves and frying pans instead.
This is hardly run-of-the-mill research equipment, but it is integral to a prototype just developed at one Italian lab.
“This is an electric restaurant car. We wanted to show that by just using photovoltaic energy you can not only drive the vehicle, but also power a kitchen and be able to cook in an ecological way,” says IFEVS’s CEO, Pietro Perlo.
The prototype has been designed by scientists at a European research project aimed at exploring new innovative ways to design and produce modular urban light electric vehicles.
The tiny food van is the latest newcomer in a game that also includes small pick-ups, vans or even taxis.
They all share the same concepts for the chassis, the powertrain and energy-driven technologies.
“Our car is modular. We always have the same chassis based on a mix of very high resilient steel. The car has 4 powered wheels. It has two motors, one in the front, another in the back. Each motor feeds two of the wheels,” says Perlo.
These modular cars have been designed with simple elements to simplify assembly and reduce costs.
But they will have to be as safe as any other vehicle in the market. So researchers had to turn to new
solutions for its conception.
“We are talking about very small cars. So we have much less space to absorb energy. So we decided to use a special steel. It is a very elastic steel, really innovative. Its biggest advantage is that this steel absorbs big quantities of energy,” says Mechanical Engineer at CIDAUT, Javier Romo García.
The car´s two motors were made with magnets instead of rare earth materials to reduce costs. Each
motor delivers 9000 rpm to the wheels, according to its developers.
“Requirements for this kind of electrical traction are basically high efficiency, high power density and constant speed. This is what we tried to develop. The fact that the car has two motors offers some advantages. Two motors gives more flexibility to the vehicle, and it improves its acceleration performance.
These are the main advantages,” says Regulated Environment Protection Installation Electrical Engineer, Paul Minciunescu.
Researchers are now testing the model’s reliability and ergonomics.
Details like visibility, handling, on-board sensing or computational power are closely studied at these European labs.
“Our aim was to develop a really hi-tech vehicle, with state of the art technology, that has the safety of a plane for the cost of a washing machine. In the 90s the big challenge for technology developers was bringing a cell phone into every home. Our challenge now is to bring one of these cars to the garage of every European,” says Bitron/Plus-Moby project coordinator Marco Ottella.
While continuing to work on sometimes tasty validation tests, researchers say they are now getting ready for the next big step, full-scale manufacturing.
“Our idea is that manufacturing should be tailor-made. Tell us where you want to produce the cars. We come with our trucks with containers. Inside the containers you have robots ready to assemble the car. So in just a few days you are able to produce electrical cars that we consider safe, reliable and efficient, vehicles that are only powered with renewable energies,” says Pietro Perlo.
Researchers hope their modular vehicles could be ready for industrial manufacturing in less than 2 years.
Guaranteeing the safety and technical reliability of these existing and future electric cars, and also their charging points are the questions that European scientists are addressing from one sophisticated lab in Northern Italy.
The lab includes a novel electric and hybrid vehicle testing facility; a climatic chamber with temperatures ranging from -30ºC to +50ºC under controlled humidity.
Researchers are able to get information about the car’s performance and efficiencies under different drive-cycles and climatic conditions, including the impact of heating, ventilation or air-conditioning.
And there is more…
“We measure information on electrical data, information on the ratio between the car’s emissions and its consumption. We also obtain information about the car’s own consumption of electricity, and how its battery behaves,” says Telecommunications Engineer at the EU’s Joint Research Centre Germana Trentadue.
The lab also includes a new chamber designed to analyse electromagnetic emissions generated by electric cars during acceleration, driving and braking.
Researchers use reception antennas and receivers to measure e-mobility’s potential interference with communications frequencies.
They can also test the immunity of electric vehicles against external electric and magnetic fields.
But why is it important to measure the electromagnetic fields around the vehicle?
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