Range extending for electric vehicle operation in urban-regional areas

Today, automotive research on electromobility is in most cases focused on metropolitan or urban regions. However, districts like the mixed Heilbronn-Franken region with a population of approximately 0.9 million and an area of 4800 km2 represent many local regions in Germany or Europe. Therefore, Heilbronn University (HHN) started in 2009 to investigate the specific needs of individual and commuter traffic especially for electric car operation in urban-regional areas. Since 2012, these investigations have been extended to individual traffic with plug-in battery-powered scooters (eScooter) in the EREX (EmissionfreeRangeEXtension) project. This paper reports how the range for a 4-seated plug-in battery-powered electrical vehicle (BEV) can be extended by intelligent longitudinal control and route utilization. However, range remains an issue for any plug-in BEV so that many vehicle manufacturers and suppliers offer range-extending devices like a complemental internal combustion engine (ICE) or fuel cell units. In addition to these approaches, HHN initialised research on the field of flywheel range-extending systems for electric vehicle operation. The paper shows first results how flywheel devices can be utilized for an eScooter concept vehicle.