New Charging Concepts for Electric Vehicles
At the Geneva Motor Show (March 4 to 14) Siemens presents more key components for electric mobility.
The company will present an integrated charging system and, at the stand of Ruf Automobile GmbH, a "dual motor" concept in a new version of the eRuf Greenster electric sports car. Electric mobility is also a focus at CeBIT in Hanover. Here Siemens is working in a partnership with the Harz.EE-mobility project to connect electric cars to the smart grid.
Siemens expects there will be more than one million electric cars on the road in the foreseeable future. And these vehicles will need many recharging stations in metropolitan areas. In order to implement this cost-efficiently, a central control station will be combined with a number of low-cost satellite charging stations. Such a system from Siemens is already in place in Geneva, where a central payment system activates the requested satellite charging station so that the vehicle can be charged. The data thus generated is then sent for processing to a computer at a control center, to facilitate billing by the energy supplier, for example. The system is especially well suited for locations where many cars are charged, such as public parking facilities or company parking lots.
At CeBIT, Siemens will show how easy it is for a vehicle to “communicate” with the charging station — the user simply inserts the charger plug. This involves networking components that currently use different communication protocols — for example, the power grid, the vehicle’s onboard network, traffic information systems, and the system managing the electricity customer’s account data. This makes it possible to compare energy use with energy availability, enabling the smart grid to “know” how much energy is produced by which sources, and how much is used. Electric vehicles can then preferentially consume excess power from wind power facilities, for which there are no other consumers. Another element in this communication — which takes place between the charging station and the vehicle either by radio signals or directly through the charging cable via Powerline — is the payment process.
At CeBIT, Siemens and Energy4U are presenting the management system and SAP system connection needed for this. The eRuf Greenster's dual-motor concept presented in Geneva works individually on the rear wheels, which significantly improves the electric car’s handling. The special feature of this system is that it can also be used to charge the battery at 400 volts, eliminating the need for the otherwise usual charging electronics.
Source: Siemens