Overview
The idea of intelligent vehicles that cope with safety requirements and adapt their energy needs is a long-term strategy.
eFuture wanted to prepare the next generation of electric vehicle based on their first prototype by creating a platform which minimised its energy needs but still optimised dynamically its decisions between safety and energy efficiency. The projects key issues was the optimisation of the energy usage and its influence on the vehicle/driver. The project had already seen that optimising each component separately would not be enough, an overall concept was mandatory to look at the interactions between the components.
The key objectives of the eFuture Project were threefold: 1) development of the execution layer for electric driving, 2) E/E architecture and corresponding ECUs for fully equipped electric vehicle, 3) docking of the integrating command layer with synchronisation of the decision units. Other more specific objectives were the:
- Characterisation of electric motors and other electric driving components
- Validation of drivability with synchronisation of electric motors and optimisation of the drivetrain controller
- Added value of intrusive energy management
- Added value of execution layer
- Driver acceptance of new vehicle dynamics
- Network for safety and energy usage in an electric vehicle
- Requirements on and engineering of ECUs for domain controllers
- Separation energy/data transfer in the wiring harness
- Evaluation of capacity to reconfigure the ADAS or needs of new strategy
- Added value of ADAS integration
- Fast and robust understanding of driver’s request on vehicle behaviour and assessment of the driver’s acceptance of vehicle dynamics changes during driving
- Synchronisation of command and execution layer validation of added value of time horizon
The project consists of 6 main working packages which provide for its methodological framework:
- WP100: Management
- WP200: Specification
- WP300: Integration
- WP400: Executive Layer
- WP500: Platform
- WP600: Command Layer