EU funded ‘OpEneR’ project to increase electric vehicle efficiency

Two shortcomings of today’s crop of fully electric vehicles (FEV) are their limited driving range and long charging time – for the majority of motorists this pair of factors outweighs the host of environmental and cost benefits such vehicles offer. Key culprits behind these limitations are vehicle batteries, however improving battery technology alone is no panacea. To unlock the FEV market and reduce “range anxiety”, several leading automotive industry firms have partnered in a European Union co-funded project aimed at optimising how the power provided by existing battery technology is utilised.

The OpEneR (short for Optimal Energy consumption and Recovery) project, which began on May 1 and will run for three years, is coordinated by Germany’s Robert Bosch GmbH. Partner companies include Austrian powertrain development company AVL List GmbH, the Spanish research institute Centro Tecnológico de Automoción de Galicia (CTAG), the German Forschungszentrum Informatik Karlsruhe (FZI), French car manufacturer PSA, and Robert Bosch Car Multimedia GmbH. Supported by the EU to the tune of 4.4 million euros, the aim of the 7.74 million euro project is to develop an intelligent energy management and recovery system, integrating existing subsystems with on-board and off-board sensors.

Currently, little data is exchanged between the diverse subsystems present in a FEV and no overall human-machine interface concept exists. OpEneR addresses these issues to maximise efficiency and recuperation to significantly extend FEV range. Specifically, the project’s objective is to develop a new energy manager that coordinates control strategies and maximises energy savings; achieving this will involve the use of highly innovative controller software algorithms that merge data from numerous on-board and off-board sources (both existing and new technologies, including battery management, e-machine, regenerative braking and satellite navigation) to provide driver guidance through enhanced vehicle dashboard displays. This support system will allow drivers to consistently adapt their route and driving style in order to achieve the best energy efficiency and thus electrical driving range.

In particular, OpEneR considers the dynamic boundary conditions for electric braking; these include traction limits, system temperatures and battery charge. The system will aid the driver in maximising energy recovery by avoiding unnecessary disc braking. Driver support includes estimated braking distance, recuperation capability visualisation and braking tips based on traffic flow/navigation data and predictive cooperative information, car-to-car (c2c) and car-to-infrastructure (c2i).

To help assure the success of OpEneR, the new technologies will be developed in three stages – the so-called ‘OpEneR Technology Levels’. The project results will be demonstrated in two fully operational electric vehicles, which will be tested under real world conditions. According to the Bosch Group, the technologies being developed under OpEneR wholly complement those resulting from other initiatives, such as enhanced battery technologies, and can also be applied to other vehicle types, including hybrids, and to range extenders in order to accelerate their market acceptance.