July 2010 - Issue #10
Car makers hear an electric buzz
Story by Barry Pestana
View articles in related topics: Automotive Industry, Industry Collaboration, Sustainability & The Environment
As the world battles to keep a lid on carbon emissions and slow the tempo of climate change, electric cars are once more looking like the alternative to the petrol vehicles the world has come to rely on.
All but stalling after an initial burst of excitement a few years ago, research and development in electric cars is now humming in top gear, with several research institutions pouring talent and resources into producing prototypes of new-generation, and fast, electric cars.
In its 2010 research paper on electric vehicles, the Victorian Automotive Chamber of Commerce (VACC) says technological advances are changing the face of the automotive industry worldwide, in particular giant strides in battery technology. (Researchers at the Imperial College in London may have developed devices that create their own power.)
In Australia, the drive has been championed by institutions such as Swinburne University of Technology, Deakin University, RMIT University, La Trobe University and CSIRO, which are collaborating with each other and with overseas universities to research and develop lightweight battery-charged electric cars.
They are supported by several sponsors, including the Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Automotive Technology, the AutoCRC. The CRC was created in December 2005 to secure an Australian position in the global automotive industry. Its participants are eight leading vehicle and component manufacturers, two state governments and 10 research institutions, with a total investment in research and training of $100 million over seven years.
Swinburne’s key electric vehicle (EV) projects are principally funded by the AutoCRC, which in January this year signed a memorandum of understanding with Hefei University of Technology (HFUT) in Anhui, China, to establish a collaborative research project with Swinburne. HFUT is regarded as a leader in EV research in China, with extensive links to that country’s automotive industry.
The collaboration will include specific research in battery charging, control systems and retrofitting, and will see the exchange of PhD students and research staff between the universities.
Professor Ajay Kapoor, Associate Dean, Research, of Swinburne’s Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences (FEIS), along with colleagues Professor Zhihong Man, Dr Mehran Ektesabi, Dr Clint Steele and Dr Weixiang Shen, are the drivers behind the collaboration.
Dr Shen heads a group developing a battery capacity indicator, similar to the petrol gauge in conventional cars, and a battery charger that can re-charge batteries in 30 to 60 minutes, while Professor Man and Dr Ektesabi are well known for their research on control systems for electric cars. Dr Steele and Professor Kapoor are working on retrofitting existing cars with battery and motor systems.
Via Swinburne’s Electric Car Drive Train group, Dr Ektesabi and Ambarish Kulkarni are refining the development of a prototype electro motor wheel design they believe will lower the cost of electric cars. They are collaborating with CSIRO, the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC) and La Trobe University, with the focus being CSIRO’s switch reluctance motor within the wheel hub, which eliminates the need for a separate motor and drive-train assembly. The weight and energy savings gained could lead to greater efficiencies in terms of kilometres per electrons.
For the researchers, the overarching challenge is to develop a strong, but light electric car that can cover longer distances at acceptable speeds. To this end, via another AutoCRC project, Swinburne has joined with Deakin University, RMIT University and VPAC to investigate and produce a lighter car structure.
The AutoCRC’s project leader on this study, Dr Matthew Dingle, says although engine fuel efficiency has steadily improved over the past decade, fuel economy of typical vehicles has largely plateaued due to increasing vehicle mass. “A key enabler for reductions in fuel consumption is reduced vehicle mass, which determines the mass of many other components including suspension and powertrain,” he says.
Swinburne’s contribution to this work is spearheaded by Dr Tracy Ruan, Dr Yat Choy Wong and Professor Chris Berndt. The research focuses on the structural response and energy-absorbing performance of sandwich structures – two composite skin sheets and aluminium foam/honeycomb cores – a technology used in the aircraft industry.
Professor Berndt is optimistic that the weight reductions will be dramatic without compromising road-worthiness or crash resistance, with associated benefits including fuel savings, reduced carbon ‘wheel print’ and materials recycling.
But perhaps the most marketable of the many projects has been the student electric car project, initiated by Professor Kapoor and Dr Ektesabi and supervised by Ambarish Kulkarni. Last year, 15 undergraduates produced an electric car that can reach a top speed of 100 kilometres an hour, with enough battery power to last two-and-a-half hours.
Dr Steele, who joined Swinburne this year and is a senior lecturer at the FEIS, is academic adviser for a project to design and build an electric Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) race car.
Dr Steele is confident the team of students and graduates will soon have an electric race car that is competitive with a petrol race car and which will also regenerate the energy that is recovered during braking. Construction of this car is about to start.
Background gains to come from the research will be increasing public awareness of advances in electric cars and a generation of university graduates able to supply the automotive industry with skills in electric car development.
Dr Steele can already see the skill sets required in the auto industry changing. “We will also see an increase in the need for qualifications in robotics and mechatronics. And we will need engineers who are part mechanical and part electrical.”
Professor Kapoor says the team is optimistic about its work and its future impact. “Road transport contributes an eighth of total carbon dioxide emissions in Australia. New and retrofitted electric cars will reduce those emissions and help the environment. We are very excited by these projects.”
