ABSTRACT

“The circular economy should be a central political project for Europe, as it offers the potential to set a strong perspective on renewed competitiveness, positive economic development, and job creation. Growth within: a circular economy vision for a competitive Europe makes a strong case for business models centred on the use, rather thanconsumption, and regenerative practices that have, on top of economic advantages, beneficial impacts forsociety as a whole”

Ida Auken, Member of Parliament, Denmark

In this new vision of society and economy, the transport sector should give its contribution, starting from individual mobility.This would require a society capable to address imperfections of the market such as the social cost of resources consumption, information barriers, congestion and other unproductive transportation time, and health effects, which is an area where a new concept of electric car can play a crucial role.

Indeed, EVs powertrains are clean (carbon free if electricity is provided from renewable energy sources), quiet and at least three times more efficient than internal combustion engines. Moreover, they have fewer moving parts and other maintenance requirements. Maintenance costs can drop at least 50-70 percent as EVs need no transmission fluid, engine tune-ups, or oil changes and experience dramatically less brake wear due to regenerative braking.Nevertheless, the market take-up of electric cars is being delayed. On the other hand, the state-of-the-art technology is sufficient for using electric cars down-town, whereas long interurban journeys remain problematic; a 25 kWh battery, even at 50 kW fast charging, still requires 30 minutes for charging and gives up to 90 km of autonomy on a motorway at 130 km/h lowering the commercial speed of a motorway trip by electric cars to 75 km/h. These considerations hamper market penetration for EVs, also for people who use their cars mostly in urban environments.

The environmental advantages of the electric vector for urban mobility can be even more significant by introducing of buses and trams without overhead line, as well as commercial vehicles of small and medium size that in urban areas of smart cities can significantly reduce pollution. The problem is particularly felt in the historic centres of European cities.

Here animportant aspect to be investigated is the possibility to modularize batteries and BMS, since the elementary unit of the battery as storage system as the cell. This latter concept finds interesting applications for electrical vehicles in the tram and bus sector, for the development of technologies and modular solutions that can help the costs reduction of the on board energy storage systems by being able to use different configurations of standard basic modules in a widerange of vehicles.

A possible solution to increase the market penetration for electric cars is to develop, thanks to the enabling ICTs, a completely new business model for them. Electric cars, especially in satellite cities at the periphery of large one, can become part of a new transport system to complement conventional mass transit and substitute it where it is less performing. Electric cars can be shared in ownership and ridership at the same time for trips to and from any suburb to a high quality transit station. For instance, a client callfor a ride to the station and can be asked to drive a car parked nearby its place or can be told another client driving a shared car will pick him up to drive him and other two companions to the same train. The car, fast charged at the station for few minutes just to replenish the battery with enough charge for the next trip, awaits an incoming train with its occupants who will drive it back to the original suburb where it is left for the next trip. In exchange of a fare discount drivers can be asked also to relocate the vehicle to optimise vehicle positioning (e.g. the client driving from the station can be asked to pick up the driver of the next trip before reaching his destination so to have a seamless trip). In large cities, in fact, the increasing urban sprawl produces a progressive productivity reduction of public transport, which needs high urban density to be efficient and performing.

The necessary ICT’s to manage the fleet and the vehicles and its battery charging will be developed and tested bydemonstrators.

The design of the system requires dealing with several interrelated problems concerning the location, sizing and type of the charging stations, the characteristics and sizing of the power grid, by taking into account the potential demand for mobility, the existing transport network, as well as the expected electrical consumptions for other purposes.

Accordingly, the ICT architecture is thought to be designed on three logically different functional levels, as briefly hereafter described:

  • Unit level. It is the monitor and control system at car’s level. The main objective is to interface, by using on-board hardware and embedded software based on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, the car’s system for measuring critical parameters (e.g. battery charge level, temperature) and remote control for on/off switching.
  • User level. It is the mobile software thought to work as a mobile application, in order to allow a car driver to access data for monitoring car’s parameter and to apply on/off switching control. Furthermore, a location based services application will allow useful mobile functionalities like optimum path evaluation, depending on the battery recharger distribution, map visualization, path smart planning.The “App” furnishes services to book stalls charging, sending them automatically travel dates, the need of energy (the expected SOC at the arrival) and the expected time of arrival.Finally, at this level users will be provided with services integrating information concerning the existing public transportation network.
  • Control room level. Supervisor software system for fully integrated monitoring of car parameters, battery recharger status and other significant key performance indicators (e.g. energy efficiency, consumptions, travelling time, mileage). At this level the platform will automatically collect data regarding vehicles while travelling and also allow users to remotely send commands on cars and battery recharger stations. The system will provide users with tools for energy efficiency evaluation and performance optimization. The software will schedule each charging point taking into account the energy and power availability, the maximum electric load that can be feed by the distribution grid, the availability of energy produced by RES (renewable energy sources) or furnished by local ESS (energy storage systems).

All the solution will be developed in the project and tested in at least two test sites in Europe.

The approach will be based on social and cooperative community for smart mobility in smart European cities.

The solution developed will be integrate both transportation and electric grids, sharing information on energy demand, coming from the mobility system,and energy and power availability, furnished by the grid, RES and electric stationary storage systems, located in a "electrified" parking area by the "peak shaving". New services, based on smart metering systems and ICT, will be designed, improving the “interoperability of EVs with the and electricity grid regarding locally deployed”.

On the technological point of view, the industrial partner will be develops advanced ESS able to share information with the vehicle and with the charging stations: the stationary accumulations do not require such high performances as those of board, where the constraints of weight and volume are decisive, and therefore lend themselves to the use of electrochemical cells of origin "automotive", enabling them a "second life", before their final recycling with recovery of the components.

The availability of Li-Ion modules:

  • modular in size systems increasing with growing needs charging of the site
  • intelligent and therefore able to interact with one another and to the outside
  • recyclable in all their not electrochemical components (the "balance of plant" of the cell Li-Ion)
  • and finally, that can be adapted to the reuse of source cells "automotive",

can be a determining factor for the effective development of these stationary accumulations provided that, they are conceived from the beginning with automotive criteria in terms of communication protocols, interfaces etc, preferably directly derived from Li-Ion modules to traction use.

The third pillar of the proposal will involve the integration of recharge "contactless" systems and ICT systems that automatically manage the need for recharging batteries.

Only if the driver will not perceive any difference between the use of an electric vehicle and a conventional vehicle, the electric car will conquer not only the minds, but also the hearts of users, because the driver will not have to worry about the energy management of the vehicle and so the ease of use will increase.

The proposal isaddressed to the deepening of the above-mentionedaspects, with the individual car target:

  1. A novel business model to apply to electric car to increase their applicability in new mobility scenarios, which will detach use and ownership.
  2. Novel BMS designs with improved thermal management for ultra-fast charge, , as a re-usable part of standardised, intelligent module. Inner component of the module (electrochemical cells) will have a second life as stationary storage system in the recharge stations.
  3. Use of ITS technologiesfor the interoperability of EVs storage systems with the recharging infrastructure.
  4. Develop advanced services for the charging station integrated in smart grids.
  5. Develop and apply a coherent methodology for the joint design of the integrated system composed by the electrical mobility and the power grid.

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