European project to create electric vehicles supply chain

Dan Rogers - 27 Nov 2009

A new project to develop electric vehicles could see printed electronics become part of the European supply chain.

The €44 million Energy Efficient Electrical Vehicle (E3Car) project aims to create the components and systems necessary to power, monitor and manage future electric vehicles.

The 33-member consortium also hopes to form much of the European supply chain for the commercial production of the vehicles, once E3Car is completed in 2011.

Ovidiu Vermesan, co-coordinator of the project and senior research scientist at Norwegian firm Sintef, comments: 'In three years' time, when the project is completed, we aim to have developed nanoelectronic devices that will be in the next generation of cars, due to arrive around 2012-14.'

The project will use nanoelectronics to make vehicle performance more efficient and power management more sophisticated - for instance, by using an array of embedded sensors to monitor power distribution.

Manufacturing

With more than 60% of the car's design consisting of electronics, there is a need to use manufacturing processes that offer cheap electronics that are easy to integrate into new vehicles, initially for the smaller urban vehicles market.

While much of E3Car centres on the electronics expertise of semiconductor companies such as Infineon and STMicroelectronics, it is likely that printed electronics will play a part in the deposition of such large quantities of sensors and circuitry.

Co-coordinator Reiner John, research and development funding manager at Infineon, comments: 'When people see the Tesla car, they perceive it as fun and prestigious, but the question is, how practical is it? We need to come up with the production techniques to make electric vehicles practical to build.'

As a result, partners such as printed and organic electronics developers VTT in Finland have been enlisted to make the application of multiple electronic components feasible.

John says: 'People like VTT are in for their knowledge of the application of items such as sensors.'

And while E3Car is primarily focused on developing the components of the vehicles - for power conversion, distribution, management and monitoring - John notes that a second project is being considered to focus on the full integration of these various elements in an efficient manner.

John adds: 'A sister project is in negotiation with the European authorities.'