e performance

Holistic development approach of an electric vehicle

In October 2009 the research project „e performance“ started, that followed a holistic development approach towards electric mobility. The cooperating partners in the project were the Audi AG as well as the Robert Bosch GmbH and the RWTH Aachen University with the Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives (ISEA), the Institute of Electrical Machines (IEM) and the Institute of Automotive Engineering (ika). The consortium was supported by numerous other partners from universites and the industry, e.g. the TU München, the TU Dresden, the TU Ilmenau, the LU Hannover, several Fraunhofer Societies, the ForTISS GmbH and the fka GmbH. Within the project a modular system design kit for electric vehicles was developed, which can be used for different vehicle architectures and types of drivetrains. Therefore a wide range of technologies from the fields of drivetrain, energy storage, thermal management, acoustics, lightweight design, networking, user guidance and passive safety was considered. During the project a demonstrator vehicle was developed and built up, including the technical solutions and system concepts for electric mobility in the different fields of vehicle engineering. This was done in order to make them available to experience. The project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

In this project the ika first took over the concept choice and the development of the entire vehicle architecture together with the Audi AG. Therefor the Audi R8 was chosen as a suitable platform, for which all the partners involved designed a package concept in accordance with the developed components and their requirements.

Over the course of the project all vehicle components were developed in collaboration with the partners and optimized as well as intensively tested. This was carried out with the focus on the project goal of showing innovative solutions for the electrification of the drive train. For this, virtual vehicle development methods, in particular design in CAD and different simulation techniques were used. Finally the complete vehicle was built and successfully put into service.

The cooperation of students and alumni with experienced experts in the companies always was an important aspect as well. Due to that the project „e performance“ helped to accomplish about 50 diploma and master theses, 20 dissertations and numerous student projects and bachelor theses. Their results together with the project outcome are a significant wealth of experience within current vehicle projects.