E-mobility is revolutionizing the automotive industry by improving
energy-efficiency, lowering CO2 and non-exhaust emissions, innovating
driving and propulsion technologies, redefining the hardware-software-ratio in
the vehicle development, facilitating new business models, and transforming the
market circumstances for electric vehicles (EVs) in passenger mobility and
freight transportation.
Ongoing R&D action is leading to an uptake of affordable and more
energy-efficient EVs for the public at large through the development of
innovative and user-centric solutions, optimized system concepts and components
sizing, and increased passenger safety. Moreover, technological EV optimizations
and investigations on thermal and energy management systems as well as the
modularization of multiple EV functionalities result in driving range
maximization, driving comfort improvement, and greater user-centricity.
This paper presents the latest advancements of multiple EU-funded research
projects under the Horizon Europe framework and showcases their
complementarities to address the European priorities as identified in the 2Zero
SRIA, namely EFFEREST, MINDED, and SmartCorners. EFFEREST targets energy
efficiency, comfort, safety, and affordability of EVs through considering
knowledge from real-fleet behavior and personalization of data. MINDED aims to
maximize EV’s driving range by improving the thermal- and energy management of
an electric minibus to reduce energy consumption while optimizing thermal
comfort, and therefore directly impacting the user acceptance. SmartCorners
provides scalable, flexible, and user-centric smart corner systems including
e-axles and e-corners based on in-wheel powertrains. SmartCorners aims at
introducing smart corner systems based on in-wheel powertrains as underlaying
technology toward software-defined vehicles, enabling rightsizing, holistic
optimization, innovative fault mitigation and actuator allocation strategies as
well as more efficient, adaptive, predictive, and personalized system
operation.