Sustainable mobility is one of the grand societal challenges and thus a key topic for the automotive industry, which believes in the on-going demand for individual mobility. Electro mobility can help meeting increasingly strict emission targets for growing traffic in urban areas. While the second generation of electric vehicles has been introduced into the market recently, most of the models are still based on conventional vehicle models and their architectures. The new electric components however suggest new freedoms in design, whilst at the same time leading to new questions. The first phase of the advanced electric vehicle architectures (ELVA) project was investigating technology options that were regarded as being realistically available from 2020. While these were rather easy to identify, the expectations and requirements of potential customers were difficult to find and to understand. Based on an analysis of several publications and studies as well as internal data and, not to forget, a pan-European customer survey, it was concluded that the expectations were very close to what conventional vehicles are offering at the moment. This is particularly the case for the autonomous range. Building on the profound technical knowledge and better understanding of customer needs, a creative phase began. It was characterized by two routes, one being driven by the project partners themselves, while the other one involved external institutions. A public design contest was launched that brought advanced designs and architecture how they are seen by expert designers and other interested persons. In the end, three designs were awarded and used for the further development. From the internal route, a comprehensive collection of technical ideas on different levels emerged, that was a useful input to the detailed concept development in the following. Fiat, Renault and Volkswagen were each responsible to develop a vehicle concept meeting the requirements and expectations that were analysed in the beginning while taking into account the awarded designs and using the conceptual ideas of all partners. Within the second phase of the project, advanced vehicle concepts were virtually developed into a level of detail that allowed an assessment against all key criteria of importance for a vehicle development. In two development loops, the concepts were brought to a level that was at least equal than comparable conventional vehicles of the same class. It must be stated though that the architecture of these three concepts is not radically different compared to conventional vehicles, but uses well-established approaches where they showed to be useful. The results of the final assessment, which also included a life cycle assessment, were summarised in a collection of documents regarding design practices, rules, freedoms and constraints especially concerning electrical components, body and chassis of electric vehicles. All project findings and results have been documented in comprehensive reports. They are publically available on the project website www.elva-project.eu for future reference.
Future electric vehicle architectures - The three ELVA concepts
2013
13 Seiten, 8 Bilder, 5 Quellen
Conference paper
English
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