Page 37 - European Energy Innovation - Autumn 2016 publication

Autumn 2016 European Energy Innovation
The joy of reason –
smart and sustainable mobility
Germany is currently
adapting to a new future in
road transport – one that is way of example, in the current cluster
automated, connected and
electric. Home to OEMs and leading
automotive industry supply companies
but also endowed with a deep-rooted
SME culture and a highly diverse
research landscape, the Federal State of
Baden-Württemberg is now trailblazing
the design and development of these
new technologies and applications.
One of the major players is the Cluster
Electric Mobility South-West. Funded
by Germany’s federal and state-level
governments, this leading-edge cluster
comprises more than 100 companies
as well as 13 research institutions and
universities working together under
a cross-sectoral and interdisciplinary
remit – a unique advantage when it
comes to driving forward the right kind
of innovations in e-mobility systems.
‘Being sensible has never been so
much fun. And being sensible means
harnessing renewable energies for our
roads in order to reduce pollutants
and achieve net-zero GHG emissions.
However, e-mobility is also fun because
it offers simple, smart and direct
solutions and – in terms of general
appearance – many other advantages
over conventional vehicles. The
Cluster Electric Mobility South-West
has become increasingly successful
at promoting the industrialisation of
electromobility.’ Says Franz Loogen,
Managing Director of e-mobil BW
GmbH, the agency that coordinates the
cluster’s activities. ‘Our focus constantly
revolves around the interplay of three
key factors: fascinating technology,
economic potential and ecological
sustainability.’
DRIVING PROJECTS FORWARD
New materials, new parameters for
component durability, new vehicle
architectures and new concepts for
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COMMUNICATION
workshop service and usage all require
intensive development inputs. By
project ‘e-volution – integration of
innovative concepts for a more efficient
e-vehicle offering higher performance’,
Porsche AG is engaging and interacting
with six partners in a bid to fulfil a
research-driven objective in which pre-
series cutting-edge technologies from
all sectors are pooled and expressed in
one vehicle.
E-vehicles need advanced charging
technologies. The project ‘BiLawE’
is developing a smart, bidirectional,
inductive charging system: the driver
simply parks the vehicle and its smart
algorithms enable it to decide whether
it needs to ‘fill up’ or whether it can feed example of the cluster’s international
power into the grid. With electrification,
we are seeing the automobile morph
from an end consumer to a component
of the energy supply system. On the
one hand, the state-of-charge window
for plug-in vehicles can be attuned
in order to balance fluctuations in
renewable energy supply. On the other
hand, e-vehicle batteries can serve
as integrated energy stores and feed
power back into the grid. The cluster
project ‘IMEI’ focuses on e-mobility and
energy supply integration in e-vehicle
fleets and aims at integrating processes
that are presently separate from each
other, such as the scheduled delivery
slots in urban zones and the daily
load curves in the power grid. At its
core, IMEI is asking how networked
electromobility can help shaping the
smart city and thus make it a quieter,
cleaner and generally more attractive
place to be.
AN INCREASINGLY INTERNATIONAL
PLAYER
An orientation towards the global
e-vehicle market is encoded in the
genetic make-up of the Cluster Electric
Mobility South-West. The vast majority
of companies and research facilities
concerned are international players. An
approach is its long-standing
cooperation with the French region of
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. To open the
door to Europe for those SMEs that are
not yet operating internationally, the
cluster – with the support of Germany’s
Federal Ministry for Education and
Research (BMBF) – is now set to
strengthen the cooperation in Europe
as of 2017.
Don’t miss out on the latest news, go to
www.emobil-sw.de/en/ l