Advanced Mobility Today

Railways can expect to face serious competition from new transportation options including self driving vehicles that run on a far less expensive infrastructure base. By removing the cost and risk of individual driving, the advantages of the railways are eroded. Where the railways used to have advantages providing comfortable and safe commutes and cost-effective bulk cargo transportation using less personell and having higher energy efficiency. But with self driving vehicles, and an abundant supply of energy, these factors weigh less against the comfort of custom pick up and delivery at the doorstep.

In order to remain competitive, railway operators must significantly reduce the maintenance costs of their railway network infrastructure, increase the available capacity of the railway system, improve the standardization and interoperability of the vehicles, and automate many costly and inefficient aspects of railway operations, all while maintaining or improving the already high standards for safety.

For this reason, railway operators are seeking innovative and effective ways to increase the cost effectiveness of all aspects of the railway operatione.

One approach currently under development as part of the SmartRail 4.0 program in Switzerland is to replace expensive and maintenance-prone track-side sensing and signalling systems with accurate vehicle localization technology and in-vehicle signalling, also called “cab” signalling.

The development of complex safe systems is challenging.

A relay based interlocking © 2014 Wiener Linien / Thomas Jantzen

In the railway industry, the typical life cycle of safety systems spans decades and major changes in the technology used spans generations. Even today, there are still hundreds of relay based, mechano-electric railway switching control stations (called Interlockings) in operation. These interlockings are responsible for the safe routing and signalling of train movements.

Engineering requirements for safe systems

The standards for the development of safe systems require the applicaiton of a formal verified and validated process, throughout all life cycle phases of any safety relevant component, from the conception of the system through to decommisioning of each component.

This makes sense as experience has shown repeatedly that a structured and well defined process is necessary to ensure the exclusion of hazards to any extent feasible.

However as the rate of change in available technology is outstripping the ability to put into practice the cumbersome, sequential waterfall model based processes demanded by the safety standards and overtaking the lifecycle of deployed infrastructure, the pressure to accelerate the development and deployment of safe infrastructure and associated central and distributed control systems is mounting.

How can a concept for a system built out of components of yet uncertain performance characteristics be proven as safe, before those characteristics can be frozen as a final design?

Those are serious challenges.

Everybody is talking about standards for EVs. I think, most likely eventually a series of industry standards will emerge. For a key element, a main cost driver and a new component unique to EV, let’s have a look at potential standards for EV battery systems.

Before we mention any potential EV battery standard, we need to be clear what exactly we are thinking about. Are we talking about a safety standard relating to flammability or are we talking about an overall standard allowing drop-in battery pack replacement, or anything in between?

For example, when we need to replace the 12V lead-acid starter battery in our car, we may purchase a battery with similar performance characteristics from a number of manufacturers, and all will fit the car’s battery bay and work fine. Thanks to industry-standard sizes and capacities, neither we as a consumer nor the OEM’s assembly plants are bound to a single source.

What might standardization look like in the Li-Ion EV car battery market?

There are several aspects of variability in batteries for EVs that all need to be considered if you are discussing EV battery standardization. First of al, not all EVs are alike: lightweight two wheelers like bicycles and scooters, whose battery can easily be detached and carried home for charging will obviously have completely different requirements than heavier motorcycles, tricycles and quadracycles (lightweight cars). Hybrid cars that only recharge during recuperation and Plug-in Hybrids or pure electric cars also have widely differing requirements.

For now, let’s assume we are talking about a plug-in battery electric car, possibly with range extender: so for the standardization of specific aspects of a battery that may benefit battery manufacturers, car designers, OEMs, customers and service personnel, we will still have to decide at which level we are talking:

Factors to be standardized at the cell level:

• physical cell properties like form factor, size, weight
• electrical cell properties depending on chemistry, cell layout and safety features
• thermal properties: thermal conductivity for cooling/heating as well as internal thermal distribution under load
• Charge/discharge properties depending on cell temperature
• Behavior of the cell in abnormal conditions (crushing, puncturing, overheating, external or internal short circuit, overcharging, deep discharge)

Standards at the battery pack level:

• Physical characteristics: Shape, Weight, stiffness if used as a structural element, crash protection of the battery cells, safety barrier between high voltage elements and passengers, service and rescue personnel etc.
• Electrical Interfaces: high-voltage connection to vehicle, high voltage connection to external DC charger, Battery Management System control interface
• Cooling/Heating Interfaces: passive, air, liquid or air conditioning system interfaces
• in case of field removable or switchable battery packs: physical retaining system, electrical connectors, cooling/heating system connectors

I can imagine battery systems consisting of a variable configuration of standardized modules – for example a packaged unit consisting of a number of cells and cell balancing circuitry – for example I can imagine each module could be a package providing 60Volts/50Ah = 3KWh, so a car designer could choose to make a 24 KWh pack by connecting 8 of those modules in series providing a total of 480V. Such a module could be standardized in terms of the following characteristics, and as long as the module meets or exceeds that specification, it should be replaceable regardless of the internal architecture, so the same standardized module could contain different internal architectures by different manufacturers, competing with each other on the best way to deliver the required features.

Battery module level characteristics to be standardized:

• package characteristics: shape, size
• electrical connectors
• passive or active cooling/heating interfaces
• performance characteristics: operating voltage range, peak power, steady state power, charging requirements, temperature operating and charging ranges
• Battery management system communication protocol
• Module failure management: internal short circuit, cell failure, cell balancing circuit failure
• Behavior under the influence of external factors like external short circuit, being outside of permissible ambient operating temperature range in case of passive cooling/heating or failure of cooling/heating system for active cooling/heating, physical compromise (crushing, shearing, excessive vibration)

Then there are further aspects like:

• service procedures, safety regulations and instructions for service personnel
• serviceability: for example, can single cells be replaced in the field? (keeping in mind that a battery pack’s capacity is always limited by the weakest element, the life of a pack may be conceivably extended indefinitely by regularly replacing the weakest cells)
• availability of spare parts over time

Each of the above points may be quantified or specified in a standard. Some of these standards may evolve into binding standards enforced by governments like some safety aspects, others affect engineering specifications, or consist of any other manufacturers choices evolving into de-facto industry standards by market choice.

At this stage this is a work in progress for all of us who are involved.

The large scale replacement of fossil fuel powered cars is a necessary factor in removing the dependency of a country on foreign oil and simultaneously enabling the transition to a sustainable individual mobility.

After comparing the technologies available today and considering the dependency on oil and the potential for minimizing the total, well to wheel carbon emissions, plug-in battery electric cars are the only viable replacement for gasoline and diesel powered cars.

However, there are some much cited factors that, according to the proponents, inhibit the possible acceptance of battery electric cars by the broad public.

These are the cost of the vehicle including the battery, the range that is limited by cost, weight and size of the battery, the lack of a way to recharge a depleted battery similar to filing up a gasoline tank, the unavailability of charging spots at the home and work locations, and concerns about the safety, service and reliability of this new technology with a lack of market experience, concerns about the resale value of a car including a partially aged battery of unknown remaining life expectation, as well as concerns regarding the convenience and fun factors of electric cars.

So what is the most effective way to enable large scale mass adoption of plug-in battery electrically powered cars?

There are three key factors required to enable mass acceptance of electric cars:

-Price: The electric car must not cost more than a comparable fuel powered car, neither in purchase price nor in operating costs

-Comfort: the electric car must provide equivalent performance to a fuel powered car: for example, the in-trip recharging process must not take more time than a refueling stop at a gas station.

-Fun: the electric car must not be less fun to drive than a comparable fuel powered car.

Now let’s look at each of these factors:

1. Price:

The price argument for battery electric cars depends on whether the battery is included as part of the purchase price, or the battery is regarded as part of the energy system.

This has to be looked at in more detail. The battery is a chemical component, that degrades with use. Depending on the operational parameters, batteries are expected to last  a fraction of the lifetime of the car. Batteries can be made to last up to some 10 years, for example by avoiding deep discharge. That means that a battery will be used only until about 30% of the charge remains. So it will be shown to the driver as empty, when in fact it has 30% left. This makes sense, since using the remaining battery capacity comes at the cost of reducing battery lifetime overproportionally. So by fitting the car with a 30% larger battery, and using the battery only between 30% and 100% state of charge, the life of the battery can be extended to an expected 10 years.

Additionally, the battery loses a part of it’s energy retaining capacity over time, as well as with each charging/discharging cycle. So manufacturers who have to guarantee battery capacity are forced to install larger batteries than required by the specified car autonomy range. For example, to compensate for a loss of 20% of  energy retaining capacity over the course of 10 years, a battery sold as a 32KWh battery will need to start out as a 40KWh battery inside, so it will fulfill it’s specified capacity at the end of its guaranty period.

Add these two factors, and if you want to market a car with a range requiring 32 KWh of power, you need to install a 40KWh + 30% = 52KWh battery, of which you only use the charging states between 30% and 100%, and whose battery management system will have to lie to the customer and claim that the battery is empty once 32 KWh of power have been used, regardless of how much charge is actually left in the battery, in order to provide the customer with an unchanging performance over the life of the battery.

And when considering the cost, space and weight requirements of a KWh of battery storage, it is quite ridiculous to expect a customer to want to pay for and carry around 47% of additional capacity, just in order to give the customer a guaranteed mediocre, constant capacity.

So that idea is doomed from the outset. I believe that customers will learn that a battery pack deteriorates over time just as it does in the laptop computer and in the electric shaver. So the customer will come to accept the fact that, in order to restore the original full range, the battery pack will need to be serviced. The capacity of a battery pack is limited by the weakest cell – so perhaps, depending on the design of the pack it will be possible to replace the weakest cells periodically and thus restore the pack to near its original capacity. This should technically be easy to do in any pack with actively charge balancing technology.

But let’s get back to the main point: price. I tend to equate the battery to part of the energy carrier. At present the cost of the battery is comparable to the cost of some 5-10 years worth of fuel. For example, the cost of a mass produced electric car excluding battery is expected to be comparable or lower than the cost of a comparable combustion engine car. But if we include the cost of the battery in the purchase price, it is like buying an ICE car including fuel for 80000 kilometers. Charging cost, at current KWh prices, will amount to the remaining 20000 kilometers of combustion fuel. Or think about it this way: like an inkjet or laser printer, two components are needed for operation: a chemical consumable, and electrical power. In a car, the battery is the consumable chemical component, which in combination with some amount of charging electricity, constitutes the inputs needed for the system to fulfill its role of providing personal transportation.

So if the purchase price of an electric car is compared to that of a similar car, including 80% of the fuel it will need over the course of it’s “first life”, the argument that electric cars are more expensive than combustion engine cars disappears completely.

This could be implemented in the market in two ways: one is to clearly inform the customers of the situation: that in buying for example a battery that is rated for 100000km, the customer buys up front the equivalent of combustion fuel for 800000km up front, included in the purchase price of the car. The other way is to decouple the cost of the battery from the car. This can be done virtually, for a battery that is physically unseparable from the car, using a leasing construct in which the battery is leased and its cost spread over the lifetime of the car, or physically, for example with switchable battery scheme. In this case the customer only pays for battery as a service that allows the car to move. The battery becomes irrelevant to the customer, and the service supplier guarantees a specified range availability by service level agreement. The customer neither owns the battery, nor does he care about any technical specifications. The customer uses the energy stored in the battery to fulfill his mobility needs, and pays for the mobility he uses. In the Better Place model, for example, the customer will be charged for kilometers driven, regardless of the amount of stored energy used.

Either of these solutions may remove the price factor from the list of concerns that are limiting the widespread acceptance of electric cars.

2. Comfort

Drivers are used to a certain level of comfort when using individual mobility. For example, when the fuel gauge gets low, they pull up at a service station on the way, fill up and go on. This takes 7 minutes, on average. If we want to enable mass acceptance of battery electric cars, without forcing or expecting drivers to change their habits first, we need to devise a way for drivers to be able to fill up 500-1000km worth of stored energy in an average of 7 minutes. For ease of calculation, we can say we need a refueling ability of 100km worth of fuel in one minute on average.

Providing this will allow drivers to be able to keep the same level of comfort, removing one of the main concerns that are expected to inhibit the widespread acceptance of electric cars.

A typical sedan car requires between 15 and 30 KWh of net energy per 100km driven, mainly depending on speed driven. Since battery electric cars can be designed to operate at over 80% charger-to-wheel energy efficiency, we need a way to transfer about 18 to 36KWh per minute from a charging device to the in-car energy storage device.

This amount of energy transfer into an in car storage device, is currently only possible with liquid or gaseous fuels like gasoline, diesel, ethanol, LPG, or hydrogen. Liquid fuels contain roughly 10KWh of energy per liter. Given the low energy efficiency of 30-50% of combustion engine driven cars, we can refuel 100km worth of energy by filling up between 3 and 10 liters of diesel, for example. Just for completeness, let’s shortly consider the merit of these: gasoline, diesel and LPG are fossil fuels, on which this article assumes we want to eliminate our dependency. Biodiesel and ethanol have other serious sustainability issues (displacement of food crops) and do not fulfill the total energy balance (climate impact) we want to achieve. That leaves hydrogen: liquid or high pressure hydrogen could fulfill the requirement of the refueling delays. But the total energy balance of hydrogen is very wasteful: The amount of energy needed to produce the hydrogen is much higher than the energy that will be provided by the fuel cell to the wheels of the car. The production of hydrogen is inefficient, the storage and transport fraught with losses (hydrogen even leaks out through the walls of any container it is kept in), and compressing or liquefying hydrogen is a very energy intensive process. Hydrogen would definitely be an ideal energy carrier, if we renewable energy were available in abundance. This could become the case, for example if solar collectors became so cheap and efficient that we could afford to waste half of the solar energy produced on compressing or liquefying the hydrogen and compensating for the storage losses. Since we have no source of renewable energy available that we can afford to handle in such a wasteful way, for the time being, practical options left to consider are exotic solutions like pressurized air, flywheels, supercapacitors or the battery electric car. This article focuses on the latter, due to this being the one technology that can be conceived at the moment to be implementable at the shortest delay in order to remove the dependency on fossil fuels in individual transportation.

Getting back to the battery electric car, unfortunately, there is currently no technically feasible way to transfer amounts of 18-36KWh of electrical charge directly in less than a minute. Trying to do so using a fast charger system would require pulling 1 to 2 MW from the charger during a minute. At a voltage of say 1000 volts, that would mean a current of 1000 amperes. A cable able to carry 1000 amps would not be possible to handle manually by many drivers. In practice, it would require some kind of robot arm to reach out and connect it to the car battery. This leaves out or consideration the fact that no known chemically based battery technology would be able to absorb this amount of energy efficiently, that means without overheating in the process.

So currently the only way to transfer the amount of electrical energy required to maintain the existing comfort of combustion powered cars for battery electric cars, to an on-board storage device, is by replacing a depleted energy storage device – battery – with a charged one. With the suitable automation of a well designed robotic battery switching station, his has been shown to be done in around one minute.

The conclusion is, that for the time being, switchable battery electric cars are the only viable option, using existing and available technology, able to fulfill the second requirement for fast, widespread acceptance of battery electric cars to replace combustion based cars.

Die Elektromobilität ist ein altes und ein neues Transportmittel zugleich. Wir kennen alle die elektrischen Transportmittel im öffentlichen Verkehr – Strassenbahnen, elektrische “Trolley”-Busse mit Oberleitung, und elektrische U-Bahnen und Züge. In die Entwicklung und dem Aufbau dieser Transportmittel sind während über hundert Jahre viele Investitionen getätigt worden, die Betriebskonzepte sind immer wieder überarbeitet und gewandelt worden. Heute sind die wirtschaftlichen Betriebsbedingungen gewissermassen ausgereift und umfassen direkte Einnahmen der Transportgebühren über Fahrscheine, Abonnements und Frachtgebühren, sowie Anteile an Fördergeldern von der öffentlichen Hand.

Im Bereich des persönlichen Individualverkehrs dagegen, ist die Elektromobilität ein junger Bereich, der zwar seit über dreissig Jahren von idealistischen Pionieren getragen wird, in dem aber der Erfahrungswert zu den wirtschaftlichen und technischen Rahmenbedingungen, der nur aus der grossräumigen Anwendung gewonnen werden kann, gänzlich fehlt.

Robert Metzger, Geschäftsführer MunichExpo Veranstaltungs GmbH

Das “Munich Network” hat im Rahmen der eCarTec, welche in ihrer zweiten Iteration nach der Aussage von Robert Metzger, Geschäftsführer MunichExpo Veranstaltungs GmbH, zur Leitmesse zum Thema Elektromobilität  geworden ist, das Workshop ‘Financing eMobility’ organisiert, in dem die Frage “Wie finanzieren wir Unternehmen im Bereich e-Mobility?” diskutiert wurde.

Curt J. Winnen, General Manager, Munich Network

Das “Munich Network” ist ein Verein von Technologieunternehmen der eine Plattform schafft für den Austausch von Erfahrungen, Wissen, Talente und Kapital.

Workshop “Financing eMobility”

In diesem Workshop wurden etwa dreissig interessierte  Unternehmer, Investoren und Vertreter von Institutionen, mit einem Bericht von Herrn Thomas Christiansen, Senior Manager bei Ernst & Young, über die aktuellen Akzeptanzfaktoren von potentiellen Käufern von elektrischen Autos informiert.

In der Ernst & Young Studie wurde untersucht welche Faktoren von den Befragten im Zusammenhang mit der Anschaffung eines elektrischen Autos als wichtig eingestuft werden. Mehr zum Inhalt der Studie hier: http://www.ey.com/DE/de/Newsroom/News-releases/2010_Jeder-fuenfte-will-Elektroauto-kaufen.

“Case Studies”

Albert Schweizer, Clean-Mobile AG

Danach präsentierte Albert Schweizer, Entwicklungsleiter bei der Clean-Mobile AG, http://www.clean-mobile.de. Clean-Mobile entwickelt und produziert komplette elektrische Antriebe bestehend aus Controller, Motoren, Anschluss und Getriebe für leichte elektrische Fahrzeuge (LEVs), inklusive Batterie-Management-System. Herr Schweizer erklärte die strategische Ausrichtung Clean-Mobile AG und beschrieb den Weg den die Gründer in der Finanzierung ihres Vorhabens begingen.

Knut Hechtfischer, ubitricity

Knut Hechtfischer, CEO ubitricity, http://www.ubitricity.com/, präsentierte  “einfach überall Strom tanken”. ubitricity geht von der Annahme aus dass Strom nicht massenhaft verschenkt werden wird, und es zur Abrechnung des Verbrauchs eine Messung erforderlich ist. ubitricity schlägt ein Modell vor, in dem geeichte Stromzählsysteme im Fahrzeug mitgeführt werden und der Ladestrom eines elektrischen Fahrzeugs über eine per Mobilfunk verbundene Zentrale mit dem Stromlieferant abgerechnet wird. Die erspart die sonst nötigen Investitionen in flächendeckende Smart Grid Infrastruktur, welche in jeder Steckdose einen intelligenten Zähler benötigt. Zum Einsatz der ubitricity-Methode werden Systemteckdosen installiert, welche über einen internen Schalter verfügen, und die von der Zentrale aus fernsteuerbar sind. Wenn der Kunde sich mittels seiner ID-Karte identifiziert hat, wird die Stromzufuhr freigeschaltet, und der im Fahrzeug integrierte Zähler meldet der Zentrale die entnommene Menge Strom (Mobile Metering).

Start-Up Präsentationen

Hans Harjung, e-Moove

Herr Mag. Hans Harjung beschrieb die e-station, eine Ladestation in der Dimension einer Litfasssäule, inklusive einer optionalen, lautlosen Windturbine. Diese Ladestationen bietet e-Moove , http://www.e-moove.com/, in Kombination mit automatisierten Mietmodellen an, vergleichbar mit einem Car-Sharing Modell.

Marcus Schmitt, Q Charge

Marcus Schmitt präsentierte die Ladestationen von Q Charge. Q Charge bedient Ladestationen für öffentliche sowie private Nutzung, insbesondere in den Bereichen Wohn- und Arbeitsplatz. Die Stromanschlüsse im Wohngebiet sind nicht für Dauerbetrieb ausgelegt – wer ein Fahrzeug 6-8 stunden zuhause lädt, riskiert Kabelbrand. Q Charge installiert Ladestationen und gewährt den Betrieb mittels eines monatlichen Vertrags. Dazu ermöglicht Q Charge den Zugriff auf alle öffentlichen Ladestationen mittels der Q:Card. Bei Q Charge sind diese Ladestationen verfügbar und sofort lieferbar.

VC-Panel

Panel e-Mobility und Venture Capital: Torsten Wipiejewski, VNT Management ltd; Wolfgang Seibold, Earlybird Venture Capital; Alex Domin, WHEB Ventures

Panel e-Mobility und Venture Capital: Torsten Wipiejewski, VNT Management ltd; Wolfgang Seibold, Earlybird Venture Capital; Alex Domin, WHEB Ventures.

Die Finanzierungsmöglichkeiten von Wolfgang Seibold am Beispiel der Earlybird erklärt: Als Venture Capitalists, sind sie bereit unternehmen auch zu finanzieren wenn in der Anfangsphase keine Umsätze vorhanden sind. Seibold: “Wir sind bereit Unternehmen zwischen 6 und 8 Jahren zu begleiten, aber weil wir 10 Jahre Fondslaufzeiten haben, müssen wir nach dieser Zeit auch aussteigen können. Wenn wir das nicht können, dann war das Investment vergebens. Davon rechnen wir zurück, und überlegen, ob ein Unternehmen das zu uns kommt, es eine sehr realistische Chance hat in diesen 6-8 Jahren dahin zu kommen.”

“Es  gibt fälle in denen wir ein Seed Investment machen, zum Beispiel im Internet, oder ein innovatives Unternehmen a la ubitricity, obwohl da auch im nächsten Jahr keine Umsätze zu erwarten sind. Aber für Hardware Themen, kann es mehrere Jahre benötigen um die so weit zu kriegen das die für den Markt akzeptabel sind, da ist die Frage, dass die  Benefits danach, bis die Umsätze kommen, noch beständig sind. Deshalb wollen wir in High-Tech Themen wo viel Hardware verbunden ist, die Nähe zu  kommerzialisierbaren Produkte sehen, und erste Traktion bei den Kunden, zum Beispiel dass sie mal Prototypen gekauft haben oder dass sie sagen wir werden im Jahr X “shippen”, und werden dann soundso viele Produkte abnehmen.”

Institutional Panel

Panel Finanzierung von Infrastruktur und Anlagen: Marc d’Hooge, Deputy Head of Division, New Product Development, Europäische Investmentbank; Gernot Löschenkohl, Munich RE; Christian Treber, Schmitz, Horn, Treber

Panel Finanzierung von Infrastruktur und Anlagen: Marc d’Hooge, Deputy Head of Division, New Product Development, Europäische Investmentbank;  Gernot Löschenkohl, Munich RE; Christian Treber, Schmitz, Horn, Treber.