Pressemitteilungen 2018 und älter

Thursday, February 23, 2012 · 390 words · 2557 characters

Design ideas for electric vehicles – ELVA project awards convincing design concepts for electric vehicles

“Develop an innovative design for a fully electric city vehicle.” This was the task of the design contest, started in July 2011 by the European research project ELVA. Now the judging panel has selected the overall winner out of more than 30 excellent design concepts.

Electrically driven vehicles allow us to establish new ways of style and design. Since 2010 the Institut for Automotive Engineering (ika) at RWTH Aachen University and its partners in the project ELVA are investigating and developing ground-breaking architectures for compact electric vehicles. In order to give these vehicles a more attractive appearance and to reveal their unique characteristics the project team invited designers, design students and other interested individuals to a design competition.

Only few basic requirements had to be considered during the first phase of the competition, which took part until October 2011. The vehicle should have four wheels, room for 4-5 passengers and 75-125 litres of volume for the battery system. A jury containing experts in design and engineering reviewed the more than 30 high-class concepts, which were handed in.

The best six design concepts moved on into the second phase of the contest with the task of adapting their designs to a technical package. They had to include all relevant technical components and assemblies into the vehicle concept in accordance with the design concept.

All participants mastered this challenge with success, which made the decision hard for the jury. They selected the Spanish automobile designer Jorge Biosca and his concept “worm-e” as the overall winner. The concepts “Kabuki” of Enrico Gatto from Italy and “Bugaboo” of László Fogarasi-Benkö from Hungary are both runner-ups.

All participants of the second phase share the total prize money of 10,000 euro. In the next phase of the project the virtual construction of three vehicle concepts begins. Each of the three participating vehicle manufacturers Fiat, Renault and Volkswagen is responsible for one concept and is supported through the other project partners for this. The results will be publicly presented in mid 2013.

ELVA, which is coordinated by ika, is co-funded by the European Community's 7th Framework Programme and is the first European joint research project which investigates complete vehicle architectures for electric vehicles.