Overview
As the global population gravitates towards increasingly large urban agglomerates, the density of movements and the sheer numbers of people displacements is growing so fast that existing vehicles for personal transport increasingly seem insufficient: consuming too much energy (present day cars), or exposing their drivers to larger-than-needed accident risks (motorcycles or bicycles). As especially urban climates are heating up worldwide, acclimatised personal transport is getting more and more the norm, as opposed to taking a bicycle to work.
Epsilon aims to conceptualize, develop and prototype a new category of vehicle in between the ultra compact (urban) car and present day moped category small covered vehicles or semi-covered scooters. Epsilon underwrites the 'hard' performance targets defined in the call topic and seeks to meet these while ensuring a very competitive level of affordability and safety. Epsilon can achieve this by means of leveraging the substantial amount of previous and parallel (national and EU-funded) R&D of other projects in which epsilon partners participate, combined with the specific skills and expertise of the consortium members. As such it focuses on optimally integrating cutting edge yet available on prototype level components, materials, manufacturing technologies and subsystems into a drivable prototype plus 2 crash tested body structures.
The extensive real experimental testing in combination with advanced performance simulations will allow full confidence verification of the performance of the vehicle and also will allow for strong promotion of the accomplished innovation. Epsilon takes very serious care of the fit between vehicle classes as agreed in European and worldwide standards and the characteristics of the vehicle to be developed. The epsilon consortium includes 1 major carmaker, 1 automotive supplier, 3 specialized electric car engineering / prototyping companies and 4 research centres from 5 EU countries.