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First findings of UK CABLED electric vehicle trial

2010-06-21 - cars21.com

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The West Midlands-based CABLED project published first findings of a UK-wide electric vehicle and low carbon vehicle testing project. First findings indicate that EVs outperform daily usage needs in terms of range and recharging.

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Electric drive vehicle deployment in the UK

In February 2010, the UK Technology Strategy Board launched a £25 million competition for innovative, industry-led collaborative research, development and demonstration in the field of low and ultra low carbon vehicles. CABLED (Coventry and Birmingham Low Emission Vehicle Demonstrators) was one of 8 winners and proposed a project, making Ultra Low Carbon Vehicles available to a wide cross section of real world users and collecting data on their everyday use.

The CABLED project:

delivers a showcase demonstration of 110 ultra low carbon vehicles across Birmingham and Coventry in West Midlands, including full electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell cars;
delivers the infrastructure (standard plug in system) required both in the users' property, in workplaces, and in public areas;
allows a large number of available charging point locations and thus vehicle usage of diverse nature; a range of users with varying driving patterns was recruited from a diverse socio-economic background;
provides extended real world vehicle evaluation and usage data to allow for final development and hence ensure a successful production launch of ultra low carbon vehicles;
collects data to measure vehicle performance, infrastructure usage patterns, impacts and requirements with a minimum 12 months experience of seasonal conditions from all vehicles;

Findings of the first quarter

25 Mitsubishi i-MiEVs have been test driven so far and first conclusions as regards the distance, drivers and recharging can be drawn:

Distance

most journeys are less than five miles (range in which conventional cars are the least effective and most polluting because combustion engines need to warm up and are not designed for stop-and-go traffic);
average daily mileage is 23 miles (37 km) - not even half of the i-MiEVs range of 80 miles (129 km) - and less than 30% of the total charge is used in typical daily use;

Driving

generally the whole speed range (from low speed to highway speed) is exploited;
the EVs were tested in winter conditions at degrees down to -10°C; reduced usage was attributed to generally less traveling at extremely cold weather conditions;

Recharging

vehicles are parked for 97% of the time (at night time, during working hours) and allow for lengthy battery charging;
EVs were left plugged-in for more than 20% of the time despite being fully charged;

These findings lead to two preliminary conclusions:

First of all, there seems to exist a market for short range vehicles and car makers might direct some efforts in producing such vehicles at cheap prices for urban dwellers.
Secondly, means of inciting EV users to charge mainly over night will have to be created in order to balance out peak demands on the power grid, as clearly the reflex is to come home and directly plug-in the EV.

CABLED has been the first to start the trials, but 7 other consortia are going to test around 340 electric vehicles collecting the same type of data via the onboard computers, which will then be collated and published by the Technology Strategy Board in an act of open innovation, said Andrew Everett, Lead Technologist in Low Carbon Vehicles for the Technology Strategy Board.

comments

2010-06-21 21:09:27 - gareth butler

An intelligent charging station should be easy to create for home use, the user would plug the EV in whenever they wish but a calculation made by the station based on remaining capacity, the current time and required time to charge.

A trickle, followed by full rate charging during the night period. This system could get caught out by a high evening usage pattern, (say at weekends for example) However a simple question on the charge point when plugged in (will you be using me again this evening?) or similar would cover that.

Many families are 2+ car, I would expect a usage pattern whereby the EV would be used for local journeys and the ICEV for longer prolonged journeys, that is once the initial excitement of the EV has worn off :)

2010-06-21 16:54:03 - Glenn Miles

Re: Power Grid Demands
Are potential users being canvassed to see if vehicle usage data could be monitored (ideally uploaded from the vehicles directly) to predict recharge grid loading?

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