SCIRE

Transport related emissions and urbanisation are creating an unparalleled demand for less polluting and efficient means of moving. Tackling the challenge is imperative and it calls for comprehensive understanding of the landscape, its every aspect and innovative mindset. It is a well-known fact that electric vehicles are a big part of the solution (combined with renewable energy production). We aim at developing and demonstrating an innovative, modular vehicle concept that is just perfect for the urban needs: zero emission, compact, safe and rightsized for the mission. Furthermore, we aim at intensifying the utilisation of the vehicles through versatile designing to promote, e.g., multipurpose usage and shared concepts. The key technical innovations of our RECONFIGURABLE LIGHT ELECTRIC VEHICLE, REFLECTIVE, vehicle are: 1) modular, scalable, electric powertrain and reconfigurable interiors fit from L7 quadricycles to M1/A vehicles; 2) supreme structural and active safety proven in Euro NCAP crash test and real life experiments of our L7 demonstrator vehicles; 3) added usability and comfortability through adaptable charging solution combining conductive and wireless charging and limited automated features. To conclude, we aim at introducing a L7 demonstration vehicle that meets the highest quality and safety standards with an affordable price making it an irresistible choice for any urban environment and use case. No such solution exists at the market and our primary aim is to bridge this gap.

With the purpose of transforming road transportation in Europe to zero-emission mobility, POWERDRIVE aims at developing next generation, highly efficient, cost-effective, and compact power electronics solutions that integrate a portfolio of technologies for multi-objective optimisation of electric powertrains of battery electric vehicles. These integrated solutions can be applied to both low and high-performance vehicles, and they will be suitable for diverse types of electric vehicles. The concept of POWERDRIVE is that all the experience and expertise of the project partners in the development of electric drivetrain components will be leveraged and lead into the integration of advanced power electronics solutions for an optimised powertrain. This concept brings additional opportunities to strengthen Europe’s supply chain in electromobility for road transportation and to achieve zero-emission road mobility. POWERDRIVE intends to implement innovative strategies to improve the efficiency and power density as well as to reduce the cost of electric powertrains while keeping performance high and reliable. The technologies developed in POWERDRIVE will accelerate the development and deployment of zero-emission road mobility which will deliver concrete benefits including improved quality of life, economic growth, and new business opportunities for all the EU member states. An optimised EV powertrain will significantly reduce transport emissions and tackle the issues of air quality and noise pollution in urban areas.

Within this project a new compact and efficient high speed 30-50 kW electrical machine will be integrated with an efficient fully SiC drive and a gearbox within a powertrain traction module. The electrical machine will have a dry rotor direct liquid cooling system integrated with the cooling system for the SiC drive. This traction module can be mechanically coupled with an axle of a low performance electric/hybrid vehicle, or several units could be coupled directly with the wheels for a high performance vehicle or a light-duty vehicle or a bus. Economic feasibility of mass-manufacturing of different electric machine topologies will be studied to choose the best trade-off between performance, manufacturing cost, and efficiency in the selected performance range. Feasibility of direct drive, single stage, and two-stage switchable high speed gearboxes will be studied as well. The resultant powertrain traction module will be an optimal trade-off between efficiency, manufacturability, and cost, utilizing newest technologies in electrical machines, power electronics, and high speed gearboxes. We will demonstrate the scalability of the solution by embedding several powertrain modules on board a test vehicle.