Electric luxury: Cadillac into future mobility

Cadillac LYRIQ pairs next-generation battery technology with a bold design statement which introduces a new face, proportion and presence for the brand’s new generation of EVs. Images display show car, not for sale. Some features shown may not be available on actual production model.

Recently, there was the debut of show the LYRIQ car, a dynamic, modern and fully electric luxury crossover by GM.
The propulsion system and supporting technologies position Cadillac to be a leader in electrification, connectivity and automated driving, all delivered with thrilling performance and a new threshold in technology integration.
Steve Carlisle, executive vice president and president of GM North America, said that thanks to LYRIQ, Cadillac will redefine American luxury over the next decade with a new portfolio of transformative EVs.

Steve Carlisle, GM senior vice president and president, Cadillac (General Motors Photo)

The LYRIQ is based on GM’s next-generation, modular electric vehicle platform and driven by the Ultium propulsion system, allowing Cadillac to deliver customers a variety of range and performance options. With range being one of the biggest factors when it comes to selecting an EV, LYRIQ is designed to offer beyond 300 miles of range on a full charge, based on internal testing.

Raw material supplies from Morocco for the electric car by BMW

Editorial Staff

Although most of the cobalt requirements are likely to go on being satisfied by Australian mines, to boost further the production of electric thrusters, BMW has recently established an agreement worth about 100 million Euros with the Moroccan Group Managem. The contract signed and officialised last July 17th has a duration of five years – until 2025 – and represents the finalization of a memorandum of understanding dated January 2019.
Andreas Wendt, member of the board of management of BMW AG, purchase and supplier network manager, so commented the operation and its meaning for the manufacturer, looking also at a future perspective. «Cobalt», he said, «is an important raw material for the electric mobility. Today, signing this supply contract with Managem, we go on assuring our requirements of raw materials for batteries. We are systematically guiding the electrification of our vehicle fleet. Within 2023, we aim at achieving 25 electrified models in our range, over half of them fully electric. Our requirements of raw materials will rise in line with this development. For cobalt only, we expect our requirements will triple by 2025».
The Bavarian company has strongly stressed the traceability of raw materials of which it makes use, cobalt included, and the need that their extraction and working occur in ethically responsible conditions.
Already owner of a competence centre on accumulators in Munich and of three factories for the production of batteries (at Dingolfing in Germany, Spartanburg in the United States and, in China, in Shenyang) the company collaborates in Thailand with Dräxlmaier. Besides, they have established that, in agreement with suppliers, its batteries are made with renewable energy only. «This assures», BMW Group informed, «an overall saving of 10 million tons of CO₂ in the next decade. The high energy intensity production of high-voltage batteries is an important highly efficacious boost to reduce CO₂, because up to 40% of the emissions of a fully electric vehicle come just from the production of batteries».
BMW Group has established a technological consortium with the Swedish manufacturer of batteries Northvolt and with the Belgian material developer Umicore. «The collaboration», they informed, «will focus on the creation of a sustainable end-to-end value chain for batteries in Europe, from development to production and recycling. Facing a steeply rising demand for batteries, the recycling of components and the re-use of raw materials will be the best way to close the material cycle as much as possible».

Emilian Motor Valley, more and more development of electric cars

Editorial Staff

The district, stemmed from the initiative of big motor brands of Emilia-Romagna region, such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, Ducati and Dallara, along a radius of 100 km groups 16,000 enterprises and 66,000 employees, an enormous integrated eco-system, with world-class engineering envied worldwide.
The last news spreading in the Emilian Motor Valley concern the huge investment of over one billion dollars made by the Chinese manufacturer Faw – with almost 4 million vehicles sold in China and 90 billion dollars of turnover – and by the American Silk EV, company specialized in the car engineering and design. Target of the investment is implementing structures dedicated to the design, engineering and production of high-end electric and hybrid plug-in cars and super sports cars.

Safe driverless shuttle

Editorial Staff

The mission of driverless shuttles is guaranteeing the travel “from the point A to the point B” safely and reliably. The possible application fields can be various: for instance, to increment public transport routes with supplementary vehicles, to transport visitors from the bus stop to exhibition centres or to move containers loaded with goods in logistic centres.
The 3F Project by Bosch was conceived with this mission: «The target – explained Steffen Knoop, project leader of advanced research and design at Robert Bosch GmbH – was developing solutions to assure that autonomous-driving shuttles could circulate safely, even in case of technical malfunction or sudden obstacles».
The partners involved in the project, which benefitted from a fund amounting to 4.3 million Euros allocated by the Ministry for economic affairs of the Federal Germany, are the leading company Bosch, StreetScooter GmbH, RA Consulting GmbH and Finepower GmbH, with the collaboration of the RWTH University in Aachen and the Research Institute FZI Research Center for Information Technology.
«Driverless shuttles – commented Thomas Schamm, coordinator of Bosch project – must satisfy different requisites compared, for instance, to highly autonomous cars “. To operate without drivers, shuttles must be able to monitor the system autonomously, then to carry out diagnostics activities and to manage eventual technical failures detected, to be able to continue the travel. At the same time, they are expected to protect the system in case of critical breakdowns, for instance stopping».
The 3F project has worked at the definition of these requisites in detail, at how systems must be designed and at how optimizing the interaction modalities of single components, like for instance redundancy, i.e. the duplication of functions for safety. Moreover, to detect obstacles with reliability they have installed various lidar sensors and radars in various points on the vehicle’s perimeter, permitting it to observe the surrounding area from different positions and to avoid blind spots.
Another solution consists in the integration of the fault-tolerance, so that the failure of a subsystem is at least partially compensated by other functions.

SUV Volvo, the hybrid plug-in is coming

Editorial Staff

Volvo’s race to zero emissions is going on. Despite the period of stop to alive presentations and to road tests owing to the Coronavirus emergency, the last novelty by the renowned Swedish automotive company is shining with confidence: the SUV in hybrid plug-in version with overall power of 262 HP and autonomy up to 45 km in electric.
Next September lands on the Italian market XC40 Recharge T5 Plug-in Hybrid, the hybrid recharge version of the compact SUV that, since its release in September 2017, has become Volvo’s best- seller in Italy, with over 21,500 units sold until now.
The Recharge T5 Plug-in Hybrid version, like all XC40, springs from Volvo CMA (Compact Modular Architecture) compact platform, conceived to host the technical elements connected with electrification.

The characteristics of XC40 Recharge T5 Plug-in Hybrid

– 180 HP 3-cylinder 1.5 litre petrol engine
– 82 HP electric motor
– Maximum cumulative power: 262 HP
– Maximum torque: 425 Nm (265+160 Nm)
– Maximum speed: 180 km/h (self-limited)
– Acceleration 0-100 km/h: 7”3
– Tank capacity: 48 litres
– Consumption (WLTP): 2.0-2.4 l/100 Km
– CO2 emissions (WLTP): 45-55 g/Km
– Battery capacity: 10.7 (8.5) KW nominal (usable)
– Maximum autonomy in electric: 45 Km

The plug-in hybrid version guarantees the ecologic performances of the hybrid recharge technology by Volvo and it is the first car of the brand with serial hybrid: both propulsive elements intervene in fact on the front axle.
A XC40 Recharge T5 Plug-in Hybrid is entrusted with the important task of impressing the decisive boost to the diffusion of the plug-in hybrid Volvo technology in Italy. The target is to make plug-in hybrid variants represent 16% of total sales of XC40 for 2020, an important driving element to allow plug-in hybrid models to totalize 15% of Volvo global sales in Italy.
On a global scale, the target of Volvo Cars for 2020 is that plug-in hybrid cars achieve 20% of total sales.

The iconic Hummer becomes and electric pickup

Editorial Staff

GMC HUMMER EV Quiet Revolution Grille — GMC HUMMER EV brings bold design and remarkable capability to the electrified vehicle space.

General Motors’ vision of an all-electric future is coming into clearer focus and gaining momentum with a $2.2 billion investment at its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant to produce a variety of all-electric trucks and SUVs. GM’s first all-electric truck will be a pickup with production scheduled to begin in late 2021.The first advertising spot lasting 30 seconds and regarding the new GMC Hummer EV appeared for the first time during last Super Bowl. Currently General Motors has diffused the front image of the new electric Hummer. The predominant element that catches the attention? When the vehicle starts, the front of the car lights up, highlighting a design of great visual impact. Concerning technical specifications, at present we know the vehicle features 1,000 HP power and maximum torque exceeding 15,500 Nm. Performances? In 3 seconds, the electric pickup accelerates from 0 to 60 hourly miles, corresponding to 96 Km/h; values that seem to belong to a super sports car.

A sports electric car in “base version”

Editorial Staff

The new entry version of the sports electric Porsche-branded car is called Taycan 4S and it is the third version of this model.
Already orderable and incoming in concessionaries since January 2020, this version is available with two batteries: performance that supplies a power up to 530 HP and the Performance Plus, whose power rises up to 571 HP. In both cases, the Porsche Taycan 4S accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in 3.8 seconds and reaches a maximum speed of 250 km/h. The autonomy the vehicle can reach is equal to 407 kilometres with the Performance option and as many as 463 kilometres with the Performance Plus, the highest value of the current Taycan range.
Like Turbo models, Taycan 4S has the all-wheel drive due to two synchronous motors, one for each axis. There is also the two-speed transmission on the rear axle and the standard Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) with pneumatic suspensions.

It looks like a standard car, consumes as a hair dryer

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After 2700 kilometres through the Rocky Mountains region, from Nebraska to Oregon, the Solar Wave team – the only European team in the race – ended the course winning the first place and two special prizes with the “Emilia 4” vehicle: the award for the best mechanics and use of composites and the award for the best battery project. It is a success of Bologna University in the Automotive sector on a global scale, paving the way for possible important reverberations in industrial field.
The vehicle, developed by Solar Wave team, looks like a conventional car but with a big difference in the consumption aspect: to move, Emilia 4 uses an amount of energy similar to what is needed to power a hairdryer. With two electric motors positioned behind the wheels, it is fuelled by five square metres of high-efficiency solar panels connected with state-of-the-art lithium batteries.
Emilia 4 crossed the finish line exclusively exploiting the solar energy, without ever being connected to the electric grid to recharge its batteries, and travelling autonomously the entire course, whereas all other racing vehicles needed to be towed on a cart for at least one section of the track.

Born from an industrial research project funded by Emilia-Romagna Region through European financing – Por Fesr 2014-2020, Emilia 4 was fully developed and built in Emilia-Romagna by Bologna University and by the Solar Wave team, with the involvement of Interdepartmental Centre for Industrial Research in Building and Construction, the Interdepartmental Centre for Industrial Aeronautical Research and the support of various companies and research centres, including Cineca Supercomputing Centre and Scm Group. The engineering activity, which involved around sixty people, lasted two years whereas the construction phase was accomplished in less than one year.

Car suitable for being integrated as an electricity grid reserve

Redazione

To meet the universal desire for a transition to decentralised energy generation from renewable sources, new and innovative solutions for stabilising the electricity grid are necessary. The increasing use of renewable energy leads to fluctuations in the grid, which must be initially balanced by primary regulation, able to prevent impending power cuts at a second’s notice.
In Hagen (Germany) an important milestone on the road to emission-free energy and mobility has been achieved by technology company The Mobility House, energy supplier Enervie, transmission system operator Amprion and car maker Nissan. With the Nissan Leaf and an innovative charging and energy management technology, the project partners have succeeded in qualifying an electric car for all the Tso regulatory requirements for primary power regulation. This means that the car can be integrated as a regulating reserve for the German electricity grid – a breakthrough in the establishment of Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology in Germany.

Electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf, with integrated bidirectional charging technology, is able not only to extract power from the grid and store it in its traction battery, but, if necessary, also to feed power back. This is called the Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) concept.
The bidirectional chargeability of Nissan’s electric car is the foundation for its integration in the pilot project at the Enervie site in Hagen. In combination with innovative, intelligent charging and energy management technology from The Mobility House, the charging and discharging processes can be controlled and monitored.
As one of four Tso’s responsible for the transmission of power in Germany, and thus charged with the stability of the power grid, Amprion is a supporter of the ambitious V2G project. The Tso has defined the technical and regulatory requirements for prequalifying a mobile battery storage unit for the market for primary regulation. Amprion has now approved the Nissan Leaf, as the first electric car, in combination with the control system from The Mobility House, as suitable for this function.

The updated version of the MotoE all-electric superbike prototype

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The partnership between CRP Group’s specialized companies and Energica Motor Company to fine-tune the all-electric superbike for the 2019 FIM Enel MotoE™ World Cup goes full steam ahead: an updated version of the MotoE prototype made its first public appearance on-track for testing during the French MotoGP™. The test was carried out by both Loris Capirossi and the Energica official test rider Alessandro Brannetti.
All the solutions have been developed with the support of CRP Group’s know-how. CRP will keep going on collaborating closely with Energica, to achieve optimal results in a very short time.

The test was carried out by both Loris Capirossi and the Energica official test rider Alessandro Brannetti.

CRP Technology (the CRP Group’s specialized company in the field of laser sintering and Windform composite materials) is manufacturing aerodynamic parts in professional 3D printing with Windform materials. CRP Meccanica (since over 45 years alongside F1 teams as strategic partner for the production of hi-tech mechanical components) is working on the development of the braking and suspension system.
The know-how of the two companies are supporting the study and development of the new battery.
All these elements have improved the general performance of the superbike, bringing it closer to the preset targets.
The next stop on the road to the 2019 FIM Enel MotoE™ World Cup will be at CRP and Energica’s home GP in Mugello, with a very special rider for the demo lap: the four-time World Champion Max Biaggi.