BUILD ELECTRIC CAR

For the moment pure, battery electric vehicles, are the darlings of advanced vehicle developers. Though they have terrific shortcomings – range and high cost – both related to batteries, vehicle makers are flocking to battery electrics.

Why?

One of the reasons battery electrics may be so popular with automakers large and small is the combination of simplicity and zero emissions. Compared with conventional vehicles electrics have fewer parts. Fewer parts mean easy development. Fewer parts may mean lower cost in the future if manufacturers can get battery costs down. Zero emissions, of course, are just that, zero, no need to worry about current and future emissions regulations.

But despite the simplicity of design and engineering, an electric vehicle is quite different from a conventional vehicle: car builders can’t just stuff batteries and electric motors into a conventional vehicle body/chassis and expect complete success with their design. The best electric vehicle has to be designed from scratch to be electric. Mostly the design has to revolve around the constraints of the battery pack. Those constraints hover around the pack’s weight and the limited energy it holds.

What seems to be evolving with some car developers is that the approach to electric vehicles should be a holistic one. The vehicle from the ground up to its end-of-life needs to be considered. This approach is nothing new to followers of electric vehicles. GM’s EV1 of the 1990’s was engineered from scratch an aerodynamic battery pack on wheels, and it did very well considering the batteries available at the time. (Had GM continued production of the EV1, it would be its second or third generation by now.)

This holistic approach to electric vehicles is emerging in announcements and new vehicle introductions by manufacturers.

--- REVA Electric Car company, of Bangalore, India, with the public introduction of its new NXR (NeXt Reva) and NXG NeXt Generation electric cars, has also announced that it has partnered with ZEM Energy Ltd to create mobility services and a “second life” program for the lithium ion batteries used in those cars. The mobility services would include battery leasing, public electricity charging points,telematics and insurance.

The second life aspect of the partnership is particularly interesting. At the end of their first life in vehicles, those expensive lithium ion batteries are expected to still hold a significant charge, just not enough to propel a car. Thus so, the batteries could find a “second life” as energy storage devices for stationary applications such as wind or solar farms.

This second life would give the batteries a guaranteed residual value, potentially cutting overall cost of ownership of not only REVA vehicles but vehicles from other manufacturers who take this approach.

REVA, by the way, is selling and test marketing its cars in 24 countries. In the U.S., REVA plans on manufacturing the NXR with a partner. The Syracuse, New York area is emerging as the primary contender for a multimillion dollar electric auto plant. Syracuse is within 750 miles of half the population of the U.S. and Canada

--- Smith Electric Vehicles of the U.K. has announced that it has joined a consortium of automotive suppliers who will work together to increase the range of electric vehicles. The cost-shared program with the U.K. government and others will include the optimization of drive train efficiency through a new high efficiency electric motor, a new two-speed transmission and a central vehicle controller. The consortium will also consider ways to reduce vehicle weight (a key factor in increasing range) as well as develop ways to reduce parasitic energy consumption from vehicle subsystems. Smith has new high voltage systems planned for air conditioning, power steering and heating that will extend a vehicle’s single charge range. With technologies in the program, Smith believes it can extend the range of one its electric vans from 100 miles to 120.

Smith will utilize the outcome of the program in its Smith Edison, a pure electric version of Ford’s Transit van.

The company, which is working with Ford to introduce an electrified version of its Transit Connect micro van to the U.S. market, has also introduced two new people carriers: the Smith Ampere people carrier that seats 8 (range 100 miles, top speed 70 mph) and a nine or 11 seat minibus dubbed the Speedster (range 80 - 130 miles, top speed 50 mph). The Ampere is Smith’s name for its electrified version of the Transit Connect.

The company has also developed an on-board fast charger that could extend the daily range of the Speedster to over 200 miles per day

--- Audi, which had been panning the idea of electric vehicles in favor of diesels, now is on board with its pure, battery electric e-tron, a high performance, 4-wheel drive electric sports car.

From the beginning e-tron was built with the holistic approach. To accommodate the 1036 lbs (470 kg) of battery and control electronics, Audi kept the body weight low utilizing aluminum and carbon fiber reinforced composite materials. Including the battery, the e-tron tips the scales at only 3500 lbs (1600 kg).

Further, with 230 kilowatts (313 hp) of electric drive on the tap, the e-tron is a very quick car, but Audi limits its top speed to a still-fast 124 mph to keep energy consumption from the battery pack within reason. Audi notes that the amount of energy required by the four electric motors increases disproportionately with speed. (Despite the vehicle’s slick aerodynamic shape, air molecules slamming against the body at high speed take a toll on energy consumption the faster the vehicle goes.)

Audi, as part of its whole vehicle approach, also takes charging scenarios into consideration. Via cable and plug with 230 volts and 16 amps from a European house circuit, the e-tron will recharge in 6 - 8 hours. Up that to 400 volts and 63 amps, only 2.5 hours are required from dead battery to full charge. (Generally speaking, voltages in this range seem to be necessary if battery electric vehicles are to recharge quickly.)

But higher voltages aren’t enough. Audi is thinking that wireless inductive recharging may be the best way to go. Drive over an inductive charging spot and the vehicle will recharge without a physical electrical connection. This will certainly add to consumer appeal.

Inductive charging gets us back to the holistic EV1. Though a cord was needed to recharge that car, there was no physical electrical connection. Recharging was through a safe inductive charging device which included a plastic paddle that fit in a slot in the nose of the car: no metal-to-metal contact of electrodes.

source :green energy news