The B2B platform for full-electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles: Policy News

In Upper Austria (OÖ), automotive suppliers work on developing concepts to pave the way for electric vehicle mass production. They believe in a building block system to adapt electric mobility to every day use. 

The central theme of the Clean Motion Project OÖ is the development of key technologies for electric mobility focusing on battery technology including battery management and charging technology, power electronics, propulsion motors and light weight construction elements. The single components will be tested in different configurations on the electric vehicle and according to the test results stepwise improved.

The focus is on applicability and real life orientation. New concepts of light weight car body construction and design, optimisation of electric drive and energy management models, power electronics, charging systems and infrastructure have to be tailored to variable usage situations and individual users, e.g. municipalities, commuters, city drivers, public transport etc.

To adequately respond to this need for flexibility a building block system will be applied. The objective is to develop components such as range extender or hub-wheel motors with scalable performance that fit into different vehicles types. This will allow to assemble with a limited number of components a multitude of different vehicles tailored for individual use patterns.

Flexibility will also be applied in the EV infrastructure for which two different, each other complementing concepts are proposed: in the overall power grid integrated and off-grid charging stations with variable (renewable) energy sources.

Investing in regional competitiveness

32 partners from industry, private and public institutions team up with power companies and regional authorities to develop key technologies in electric mobility and prepare the region of Upper Austria for electric vehicle (EV) mass production. The Austrian Climate and Energy Fund supports with 4 million euro the project that calculates with 18 million euro investment to generate an estimated annual 3.6 billion euro volume business for the regional automotive supply industry.

The project partners see a potential for the production of 10,000 niche vehicles and the eventual creation of 9,000 employments which would up the number of the regional workforce in the automotive sector by 10%.

At the end of the project, electric vehicles as well as EV infrastructure should be well tested and readily available. The underlying orientation in all developments and activities of the project is future mass production.