Overview
Electric Vehicles (EV) are subject of many R&D projects aimed at improving their components and overall physical (structural) architecture. In addition, several research projects exist that seek to innovate the overall control system that 'orchestrates' the way all these components perform together in passenger EV.
IMPROVE focuses on in-vehicle ICT innovations for commercial (fleet operated) vehicles, which are in some aspects different from private passenger vehicles: different use cases, different trade-offs between comfort, driving dynamics and cost efficiency, and more embedded in a fleet of several vehicles.
Within this focus, IMPROVE leverages a set of hardware and software innovations that in combination add a targeted 20% of range for the same battery capacity; increase the life of the battery, reduce the cost of key components and uses deeply integrated interconnections between subsystems inside the vehicle and between the vehicle (sub-)system and the outside world (cloud, grid, work, office). All these performance increases are achieved while maintaining safety and increasing comfort and wellbeing for the driver(s) of the vehicle.
IMPROVE integrates an induction e-motor (without permanent magnet) with an inverter to decrease cost; it integrates model embedded predictive controlling into advanced algorithms to optimize energy efficiency and -recovery. It leverages data extracted from cloud, grid and (back)office applications of the driver for in-vehicle control optimisation. All these elements are prototyped and assembled to a drivable test vehicle which will be submitted to extensive tests.
The IMPROVE consortium combines the strengths of very large, large, mid-sized and small companies with the academic / technological excellence of established academia and research centres, enabling it to optimally apply the project results in future vehicles and services with substantial impact on Europe's Green Car objectives.