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Integrated Architectures for Third Generation Electric Vehicles: Technical Challenges Meeting Customer Requirements

In order to fully exploit new freedom in design and to achieve a significant increase of energy efficiency, the third generation of electric vehicles requires dedicated architectures. The consortium of the joint research project ELVA—Advanced Electric Vehicle Architectures is developing until mid-2013 three detailed vehicle concepts which are intended to not only meet all technical requirements, but especially take customer preferences directly into account. ELVA can be regarded as one of the first European joint projects dealing with the investigation of vehicle architectures for fully electric vehicles. Aiming at series adoption in 2020, a comprehensive forecast of technology options and market requirements has stood at the beginning. This includes particularly the in-depth analysis of customer requirements. They are investigated based on studies and OEM-internal information, but also on a large-scale public customer survey. In the second phase, these requirements need to be brought in line with technology options by innovative architectures focussing on urban electric vehicles. To complement the expertise within the consortium a public design contest is drawn, allowing designers to present their ideas for future urban mobility. Based on an assessment of all ideas and options, three dedicated vehicle concepts are developed in detail, enabling optimisation and assessment of all relevant vehicle features. Technology options (e.g. batteries and electric motors) and customer expectations are still difficult to predict. On the technology side, substantial improvements especially regarding battery capacity, size and weight are expected. Customer requirements however are very much linked to the use-cases current conventional cars are offering, especially when it comes to the desired range. This has a clear impact on future electric vehicles, but cannot be fully predicted yet. ELVA is the first European project which is dedicated to specific vehicle architectures for urban electric vehicles. Especially the incorporation of customer requirements based on a pan-European survey and the public design competition must be emphasized in this context. The ELVA project brings together technical excellence and customer requirements in order to develop the most promising architectures for urban electric vehicles.

Concept car development with the example of a Ford model T successor

Only three months were needed by a team of the Institut fur Kraftfahrzeuge (IKA) of RWTH Aachen University in order to develop an innovative vehicle concept which is capable of carrying conventional as well as alternative drivetrain modules thanks to its scalable design — a modern “Tin Lizzy” for the year 2015 with a basic sales price of less than 7000 US dollar.