Thursday, March 28, 2024

Manufacturing technology for electro mobility

Manufacturing technology

At the end of January 2017, GROB acquired 100 percent shares in DMG meccanica, substantially reinforcing the competences and developments in electro mobility, which it has been developing for several years. The technologies of DMG meccanica and the new processes developed by GROB will now enable GROB to provide all the vital manufacturing processes and procedures in electric drives for the automotive industry and its suppliers worldwide, and also to supply them for series production in the near future. DMG meccanica has many years of specialization and experience in machinery and plant manufacture for the production of stators for electric motors, alternators andgenerators. The technological know-how is based on the tried-and-tested winding process of inserting technology and needle winding.
Most of the machinery and plant of DMG meccanica is used directly in the automotive industry. GROB develops and tests new processes, developed specially for the series production of stators for electric motors in electric vehicles, in its own development department. The future cooperation is therefore a win-win situation for both companies. GROB has secured further know-how in the field of electro mobility and DMG meccanica has found in GROB a strong, globally- oriented partner for series production. Further investments to expand these technologies in the field of electro mobility are planned at both sites in Turin and Mindelheim.

Manufacturing technology
Closing ceremony- Grob and Dmg meccanica management.

Mauro Marzolla and the father of Marco Debilio founded DMG meccanica in 1992 from a spin-off of one of the leading Italian providers of winding machines for electric motors. In 2016, their company with a workforce of forty employees achieved a total turnover of ten million Euro. Their customer portfolio includes many well-known electric motor manufacturers and suppliers to the automotive industry. DMG meccanica is particularly well-represented in the important e-mobility market of China. Owners Mauro Marzolla and Marco Debilio will stay with the company in future and will continue to be co-CEO´s of DMG meccanica. In addition, DMG meccanica will remain an independent company within the GROB-Group, and all jobs in Italy will of course be retained.

A leading machine tool manufacturer

GROB-WERKE is an internationally active family company based in the Bavarian-Swabian town of Mindelheim, with a product portfolio ranging from universal machining centers to highly complex manufacturing systems including automation, and from machining assembly units to fully-automated assembly lines. GROB is one of the few machine tool manufacturers that produces and supplies both machining and assembly equipment. Since the production of electric motors demands special assembly know-how, it was logical for GROB to seek a competent partner from the field of electric motor technology. Its takeover of DMG meccanica enables GROB to emphasize more than ever its claim in drive technology to be a leading and reliable partner for the automotive industry.

More than 1.6 million vehicles are likely to be sold

Frost & Sullivan’s “Global Electric Vehicle Market Outlook, 2018”

According to Frost & Sullivan’s recently released “Global Electric Vehicle Market Outlook, 2018”, the electric vehicle market reached the 1.2-million sales mark for the first time, with more than 165 models available for sale. China is leading the market with 48% market share followed by Europe with 26%.

Solid-state batteries

Solid-state batteries are likely to be the “game changers” of future battery chemistries, as they render 2.5 times higher density than lithium-ion. In the last 6 months, more than 10 automakers have announced future electric vehicle launch plans. Based on the announcements, electric vehicle now have a market potential of about 25 million units that will be sold by 2025; more than 400 models will be made available.

Frost & Sullivan’s “Global Electric Vehicle Market Outlook, 2018”
Frost & Sullivan’s “Global Electric Vehicle Market Outlook, 2018”

The Tesla Gigafactory is currently 35% operational and aims to produce 50 GWh of batteries in 2018. On full capacity, it will manufacture 150 GWh which will power an equivalent of 1.5 million vehicles with a 100 kWh battery capacity. Toyota, Fisker and BMW are likely to be the first automakers to adopt the battery in its electric vehicles by 2023.

Charging infrastructures

The electric vehicle charging infrastructure challenge has not yet been addressed, as there is a need for more charging stations globally.

Frost & Sullivan’s “Global Electric Vehicle Market Outlook, 2018”
Frost & Sullivan’s “Global Electric Vehicle Market Outlook, 2018”

Currently, the density of charging stations is high in limited areas or regions where an electric vehicle sale is highest.

Costs and market 

Electric vehicles are likely to cost the same as conventional cars by 2020 which will be a huge threat to the conventional car industry. The EV industry will no longer require financial support from the government to regularise the price of an Electric vehicle in the form of cash incentives.

Logistics companies, such as DHL, DPD, TNT, etc., are switching to a 100% electric fleet by replacing current conventional vehicles with electric vehicles that are equally competent and a perfect fit for the business model. OEMs are shifting to 100% electric vans by 2020. 11 OEMs have announced electric vehicle milestones and targets.

Frost & Sullivan’s “Global Electric Vehicle Market Outlook, 2018”
Frost & Sullivan’s “Global Electric Vehicle Market Outlook, 2018”

If all the announcements made so far were to come true, there will be about 25 million electric vehicles sold by 2025 or 20% of all cars sold would be EVs.

Energy and petrochemical companies have started investing heavily in establishing electric vehicle charging stations, as they are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries of the electric vehicle market. Shell acquired the largest infrastructure operator “The New Motion” in the Netherlands which owns a network of 30,000 charging stations.

Components. Driving sector of industrial growth

Components
Components

The new mobility paradigms impose to this sector and to the component one to invest in the research of green automated solutions connected with the telematics infrastructure network.
It is a dynamic and lively market, with a strong propensity for innovation. This is the picture outlined by the last edition of the Observatory on Italian components, the survey carried out by Turin Trade Chamber, by ANFIA and by CAMI Centre of Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. «In 2016, this sector achieved a turnover of 40 billion Euros, growing by 4.3% compared to the previous year.

Observatory on Italian components.
Observatory on Italian components.

The export is worth 20 billion Euros and the main destination areas of Italian components are Europe and United States – affirmed Vincenzo Ilotte, President of the Trade Chamber of Turin during the press conference on the Observatory –Besides, the automotive world is in constant evolution: ten years ago, we imagined a market characterized by low-cost vehicles.
Today reality is different: companies invest in the autonomous drive, in materials, in infomobility and entertainment. It is a field driven by continuous technological transformations».

The automotive industry trend in the world

In 2016, 95 million vehicles were produced on a global scale, 22 millions more than in 2007: about half of them were sold in Asia, 23% in Europe and 19% in the NAFTA Area.
«The data on the 2017-trend show in the first semester a world-scale growth in the production of vehicles by 2.4%, amounting to 45.8 millions, with the 1.8% reduction in Europe and the 4.4% increment in Italy (576,000 units) – underlined Giuseppe Barile, President of ANFIA Component Group – In Italy, where the production of the automotive sector production grew by 7% in 2016, against the +1.7% of the overall industrial production, and the 1.1 million vehicles produced make us rank as the sixth manufacturing Country in EU. Components provide an important contribution also to the trade balance, maintaining a trade surplus for over 20 years, corresponding to 5.5 billion euros in 2016 (+0.3%) and around 3 billions in the first 2017 semester, as confirmation of the consolidated international success». The new trends that characterize the sector, such as the environmental sustainability, will exert an impact on enterprises’ working and business modalities.
«Our chain must react and achieve the suitable structure for increasing the competitiveness level through the investments in product and process innovation – added Barile – Concerning this, according to a recent survey, 46% of Italian companies have started projects connected with Industry 4.0 and 29% of them undertook all that already two years ago».
Observatory on Italian components. Since 2007 until now, the world demand for vehicles, risen by over 30%, has enormously changed: industrialized and “motorized” Countries, historically production areas, have witnessed the decrease of the weight of their markets from 57% to 44%, whereas BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), whose demand has grown by 118% versus 2007, have reached 37% of word sales (it was 23%). In the first 2017 semester, the global demand for vehicles reached 47 million units (+2.6%). In Europe, sales rise by 4.1% also thanks to Russia, which scores +7% after years of consecutive drops. In the same year, in Italy registrations grow by 9%, whereas the year-end forecasts expect 1.98 million registrations approximately (+8%).
The world vehicle production, supported by the positive demand trend, in 2016 scored over 95 million units, with +4.7% versus 2015. The world productive increment was by over 4.2 million vehicles, of which 3.5 produced in China.
In Italy, both the internal demand and the export have led to over 1.1 million units produced in 2016 (+9%). Compared to 2007, the world production registers, as for registrations, the 30% rise. In the first 2017 semester, according to the estimates by Ward’s Automotive Reports, the production scores the +2.4% growth and for Italy by 4.4%. In 2017, the world production of vehicles is expected to confirm the trend, exceeding 2016 volumes. In Italy the growth is going on, too, having closed the 1st semester 2017 at +7.3 (ISTAT data). In 2016, 54% of vehicles were manufactured in Asia-Oceania, 23% in Europe and 19% in Nafta area, 4% in the rest of the world.
China is the first producer nation in the world, with 30% of the world production, followed by USA (13%) and Japan (10%).

The chain structure

The automotive component world is constantly evolving: to take the chain complexity into account, intercepting all the categories of suppliers involved, the investigation has included in its observation range also activities like specialists in telematics and infomobility, motorsport and aftermarket.
Observatory on Italian components.According to this logic, among automotive component enterprises, we can distinguish: system integrators and module suppliers, at the top of the supply chain with factories located closed to manufacturer’s plants, which implement functional systems or modules, with a high competence level; specialists, producers of parts and components, with such a content of innovation and specificity as to constitute a competitive edge, encompassing also the category of telematics specialists that work at applications connected with infomobility; motorsport specialists that, starting from the fitting out of cars for sports competitions, design and manufacture components (seats, steering wheels and safety belts) or supply solutions adopted for mass productions, too; aftermarket specialists, which implement parts and components directly sold on the market through a distribution network or consortia of spare part suppliers.
They can have supply relationships with automotive industries but there are also aftermarket divisions of the same multinationals. Besides subcontractors, which produce standard parts and components according to the specifications supplied by customers and easily repeated by competitors, and in whose category we can identify the companies that execute mechanical machining such as turning, milling, rolling, stamping or treatments (thermal, painting etc.), the chain is completed by engineering and design activities, protagonists in the devising and design of a car, particularly numerous in Piedmont (55% of the Italian total), which supply services directly to assembling companies or Tier 1 suppliers.

The Observatory’s results

The survey, presented by Barbara Barazza, Manager of the Study, Statistics and Price Sector of Turin Trade Chamber, has highlighted that in 2016 all component manufacturers scored good performances: among suppliers, the most dynamic are the specialists in motorsport (+9.5% at Italian level), subcontractors (machining) (+9.4%), E&D (+7.8%) and system/ module providers (+5.6%).
In Italy, over 76% of enterprises declare they export: the percentage has grown by one point in the last year (it was 75%). On the whole, 39% of the overall automotive turnover derives from export. EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) is the main addressee of the Italian export, mentioned by 86% of enterprises but the first 5 markets are all in Europe (Germany, France, Poland, Spain and United Kingdom).
Observatory on Italian components.
A sound component industry, thanks to export, geographical and productive diversification and enlargement of destination markets, succeeds in maintaining a high saturation level of the productive capacity, which in 2016 reached the 78% average. The percentage of enterprises that have declared a plant saturation percentage exceeding 80% has grown from 51% in 2015 to over 61% in 2016 and has indistinctively concerned all productive segments of the chain.
Sector players look optimistically at the future: for the current year, expectations not only maintain a positive sign but consolidate in comparison with the previous year: 87% of operators declare their optimism (80% in 2015) and confidence pervades all clusters, with particularly rosy forecasts for module and system providers (91% with growth estimates), specialists and E&D (89%) and the aftermarket (80%). Green, new materials, infomobility, autonomous drive, electric and hybrid motors represent the new directions in the process of transformation of automotive induced activities, like the cost reduction and the process reorganization. Finally, 71% of the sample declare they invest part of their turnover in research and development activities that are prevailingly carried out “in house”.

The round table

The last part of the press conference on the Observatory was dedicated to a discussion, chaired by Francesco Zirpoli, Center for Automotive and Mobility Innovation, Ca’ Foscari University, on the opportunities and the challenges for the Italian component chain.
«The Italian automotive supply chain is living a time of growth and development. However, the mobility world is changing. The Italian component industry will be able to constitute the backbone on which to base the mobility future in Italy if it succeeds in reversing the trend involving lower investments than international competitors in research and development and scarce networking to gain access to new technological competences.
Observatory on Italian components. As far as the overall Italian situation is concerned, the challenge to be won is maintaining in Italy the design and the production of vehicles, systems and modules with high technological complexity. This requires a trend inversion in innovation investments that currently position Italy in a disadvantaged situation compared to Countries with a similar industrial tradition». Massimo Mucchetti, President of Senate Industry, Trade and Tourism Commission highlighted that in Italy, in industrial ambit, components are becoming more and more important than the implementation of the finished product but it is necessary to invest to be in the technological forefront.
Giorgio Elefante
, Automotive Sector Leader Italy Price Waterhouse Coopers was then called upon to speak: «There are some key points for the business management: the awareness of challenges, the conscious determination of strategies, the individual and collective professional force and institutions’ support. We need clear rules supporting innovation. The automotive sector is driven by some big changes that will exert an impact on mobility, such as demographic trends and urbanization, the geo-political scenario characterized by a rising climate of protectionism, climatic changes and the shortage of resources, the technological evolution of products and services. Finally, internationalization plays a determinant role and it is necessary to support those enterprises that invest in research and development centres so that they can create sustainable value».
Vincenzo Ilotte, General Manager 2A Spa highlighted the great flexibility of the net in our entrepreneurial fabric and how this element can represent a point of attraction. In the opinion of Giuseppe Barile it is necessary to focus on research and development. Ezio Fossati, ZF Senior Vice President FCA & CNH Global Sales Division A has reconfirmed that it is essential to create an eco-system of collaborations: «Technologies evolve so quickly that no company can have all competences in its inside» (Elena Ferrero).

Another piece of the GROB puzzle

The development of GROB is unstoppable. The German company continues to expand itself in Italy too, in order to complete its European presence and focus increasingly on the production of electric motors.

Top player in the design and construction of high-efficiency machining centres and production lines, the family-run company GROB – now in its third generation – is investing resources in the Italian territory, and last 12th march it has inaugurated the construction of a new plant in Pianezza, close to Turin. We were present at the ceremony for laying the foundation stone. The inauguration of the construction took place in the presence of the German management board of GROB, Christian Grob and German Wankmiller, the CEOs of GROB Italy, Mauro Marzolla and Marco Debilio, the mayor of the municipality of Pianezza and the main exponents of the local industrial fabric.

From left to right: German Wankmiller, Margherita Marzolla, Christian Grob and Antonio Castello, mayor of the municipality of Pianezza (TO)
The company

Let’s take a step back. In 2017, the machine tool manufacturer GROB acquired DMG meccanica, an Italian manufacturer of machines for the production of stators for alternators and electric motors. This strategy underlines the willingness of the German player to focus more on the e-mobility sector and to establish itself as a manufacturer of electric motor components.
Today GROB has a total of 6,900 employees and a turnover of 1.5 billion euros, fifteen branches around the world, five production plants in Germany, the United States, China, Brazil and Italy, in Buttigliera Alta (current headquarters of the former DMG meccanica).
“With this establishment” – Christian Grob said, – “we add another piece to our puzzle. We want to strengthen our presence in the electric vehicle sector, engaging even more in research and development of technologies for the electromobility sector. We are also investing in this new Turin headquarters with the aim of bringing together the entire production circuit, from the idea to the realization.”

The foundation stone of the new Italian plant of GROB
The factory

Today, the plant located in Buttigliera Alta is no longer able to cope with the higher productivity required by the development of the business, increasingly projected to automatic lines for the production of electric motors. The new Pianezza site will be ready in about 14 months, starting at full capacity in the summer of next year.
“The transfer of the GROB Italy plant from Buttigliera Alta to Pianezza,” – explained Margherita Marzolla, – “is part of a multi-year development plan, intending to make Pianezza a reference point in the design and construction of special machines and automation solutions aimed at creating electric motors.”
The new plant in Pianezza will be a highly functional centre, distributed on a total area of 24,000 m² of whit 4,800 m² of production area and 3,300 m² of offices and services. The goal is to understand the entire production circuit, from conception of the idea to its practical construction, and the economic investment allocated to date is about ten million euros.
This is good news for local employment: the current GROB Italy workforce includes about 60 employees, but an increase of around 40-50 new jobs is expected in the first phase. Internal training courses will therefore be activated, which, in collaboration with a vast network of local excellence in education, will provide young people with a specific technical preparation.

DC Motors: the global value for 2020 is espected to be 130 billion dollars

An electric motor, highly simplifying, converts electric energy into mechanical energy and this occurs through two interacting magnetic fields, one stationary and the other integral with a moving part. The origins of electric motors date back to a distant past, if we remember the base principles of electromagnetic induction were discovered in the early years of 1800 by Oersted, Gauss and Faraday, in 1820 Oersted and Ampere demonstrated that an electric current produces a magnetic field and, according to the historiography on the matter, the first real rotary engine was created in 1834 by Moritz von Jacobi. Today electric motors are a technologically advanced reality, available in manifold typologies, with a global market value that for 2020 is expected to approach 130 billion dollars,
then almost 110 billion Euros at the current exchange rate. Considering a basic subdivision, they are split into AC motors and DC motors, and both these categories provide then for other detail subdivisions. AC motors, for instance, are developed into synchronous, asynchronous or induction, single-phase or three-phase. In the first case, the rotor rotation is synchronized with the frequency of the power supply current and the speed remains constant if the load varies; ideal for moving a load at constant speed, they are used for high-precision positioning.

In the second typology, the electromagnetic induction from the magnetic field of stator windings is used to produce an electric current in the rotor, and then torque; single-phase motors are generally adopted for small loads whereas three-phase ones have their use context in industrial ambit, for instance for compressors, pumps, conveyors and lifting systems. DC motors, the first broadly used also due to the user-friendly speed control by varying the power supply voltage, provide for two main branches: Brushed, or Brush, with brushes, and Brushless, without brushes. Traditionally, the subdivision is done by power: 0-750 Watt (with the major market share), 750 Watt-3kW, 3kW-75kW, and above 75kW. Concerning the global size of this market, the data that can be inferred from some of the most in-depth researches on DC motors are quite differing, especially if projections are on the long-term; they report for instance 35 billion dollars within 2025 (reference: Grand View Research, Inc), and highlight that the growth of the DC motor market will be mainly driven by the Automotive ambit. The sales of Brushless motors are prevailing in comparison with Brushed, and already in 2016 they held the highest market share. Still according to projections, they indicate for Brushed a growth with CAGR (Compounded Average Growth Rate) by around 3% from now until 2025, which becomes by 4% for Brushless.

DC Brushed motors

Following an approach of scholastic type, a typical DC brushed motor includes a rotary armor, or rotor, which contains windings of wires insulated and wound around a weak iron core, and a stationary stator that encloses the rotor and contains electromagnets or permanent magnets that generate the magnetic field. The windings, which form one or more coils, are electrically connected with the commutator, a cylinder consisting of various metal contact segments around the armor bar. Brushes are electric contacts made with soft material, typically graphite, in contact with the segments of the commutator when the bar rotates. If we apply a DC power source to brushes, the coils of the armor are energized, creating an electromagnet that is set in rotation, with its north and south poles aligned with stator ones; with the rotation, it is determined an inversion of the energy polarity in the armor coils and of the direction of the relative magnetic field; the armor rotates towards the new alignment, the current is inverted again and the armor goes on rotating. This inversion is commonly identified by the term of “mechanical switchover”. Acting on the arrangement of windings, different typologies of DC Brushed motors have been implemented. In a motor with winding in derivation, where field coils of stator and rotor are connected in parallel, the operation is at constant speed, irrespective of the load. In the case of winding in series (two coils wound in series), the speed varies with the load and it increases when the latter decreases, but making high start torque available.

The characteristics of both previous typologies are achieved with a composite winding, combination of the motors with winding in derivation and in series, typically used when complex start conditions occur and when a constant speed is required. Separate excitation motors, with separate feeders for stator and rotor, hence with high field current for the stator and sufficient voltage for the armor to produce the necessary torque current for the rotor, find application when low speeds but high torque capacities are needed. A further typology is with permanent magnets in the stator, thus annulling the need of an external field current: the design is more compact and lighter and the energy efficiency is higher in comparison with other DC Brushed. The control of a DC brushed motor is essentially simple because the switchover is mechanically executed. In a constant-speed motor, for instance, just a DC voltage and an on/off switch are necessary while the speed can be modified by varying the voltage. If a more sophisticated control is needed, specific circuits, widely available and well consolidated, are adopted while a PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) signal is used for the speed control: the motor winding operates as low-pass filter, so that high-frequency PWM waveforms generate a stable current in the motor winding. For more precise regulations, it is possible to integrate a speed sensor, for instance a Hall-effect sensor or an optical encoder, thus creating a closed loop. In short, DC Brushed motors are inexpensive, reliable and with a high torque/inertia ratio but they have the problem of brushes that tend to wear in time, hence the need of periodical maintenance, for replacement or cleaning. Worth considering other limits, too: if the motor has big power, other problems of heat disposal arouse because windings heat up by Joule effect; windings make the rotor heavier, from which the rise of the moment of inertia derives; besides, if the motor must provide a fast and precise response, as required in industrial automation and in robotics, the control becomes more complex; electromagnetic interferences are generated in the arc of brushes because between them and the collector, in switchover times, there are opening transients of inductive windings and then flashing, which can be anyway attenuated by various devices. (A.C.)

Safety is crucial

For the development and the diffusion of vehicles equipped with autonomous driving systems, the safety matter is obviously central. The results of the research “Global Automotive Consumer study” by Deloitte have highlighted, for instance, that European consumers feel safer on an autonomous-driving car produced by manufacturers of the automotive industry than in cars proposed by hi-tech companies, thus revealing people’s trend to perceive brands already known and “tested” as more reliable. The safety of autonomous driving systems is a topic to which TÜV SÜD (independent body that operates in certification, inspection, testing, tests and training) has dedicated the “Driver Assistance Systems Conference”, held in Munich, in Germany, with the participation of over 200 engineers. Among the themes treated – as underlined Pietro Vergani, Business Unit Manager Consumer Product of TÜV Italia – they debated also the simulation issue, which will play a fundamental role in the future test and homologation activities. «Using these methods – he stated – test structures can assess daily up to 50 million scenarios: an unfeasible enterprise with physical tests on vehicles». Another subject discussed in Munich concerned the electronics of cars and these systems’ capability of imitating human behaviour.

Autonomous driving

The engineers attending the conference mentioned “neural networks”, i.e. a sort of artificial nervous system that allows machines or computers to learn autonomously, in compliance with the artificial intelligence vision. Besides, at the conference they presented IMAGinE project, which develops advanced driving assistance systems able to introduce support actions to the autonomous driving, too. Concerning instead platforms, the representative of an automotive company attending the conference underlined that “non-exclusive” ones will become more common in the future, they will be at disposal of various automotive companies and this will result in a reduction of costs, meanwhile making available a growing number of vehicles. Finally, in the opinion of Pietro Vergani, innovations also in car homologation methods will have to correspond to technological innovations. «We have analysed thoroughly new possible homologation approaches for autonomous-driving cars – explained Vergani – and we have inferred that virtual homologation methods, based on test simulation of virtual vehicles, are already reality and transposed by the legislation in course, even if not extensively and for dedicated approval ambits, like for instance the simulation of mechanical stresses on frames or underrun bars. Such methods, and the relative technical validations, are steeply rising and they will be the control basis for the vehicles of the next future».

 

Advanced mobility services

ZF Car-eWallet

ZF has established Car eWallet GmbH, a start-up headquartered in Berlin that will be entrusted by the Germany company with Car eWallet service activities, permitting to pay for the refuelling, for recharging electric cars or also for tolls, parking and car sharing. The project involved then the temporary collaboration between ZF and IBM and UBS partners, positively ending last Spring. Now, the target is further developing and marketing the service: in an initial financial phase, ZF will give the start-up the starting capital; in the future, investors will have to grant funds. «In this way – explained Alexander Graf from ZF Friedrichshafen AG, one of the first creators of Car eWallet and today project manager – we can exploit the dynamism of the scenarios where start-ups operate, where several innovative approaches can be developed more freely and quickly compared to what happens in a corporate structure».

Car suitable as electricity grid reserve

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.

A joint work on electric vehicles

Nissan LEAF

Cruise and General Motors announced that they have joined forces with Honda to pursue the shared goal of transforming mobility through the large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicle technology.
Honda will work jointly with Cruise and General Motors to fund and develop a purpose-built autonomous vehicle for Cruise that can serve a wide variety of use cases and be manufactured at high volume for global deployment. In addition, Cruise and General Motors and Honda will explore global opportunities for commercial deployment of the Cruise network.

Honda will contribute approximately $2 billion over 12 years to these initiatives, which, together with a $750 million equity investment in #cruise, brings its total commitment to the project to $2.75 billion.
“This is the logical next step in General Motors and Honda’s relationship, given our joint work on electric vehicles, and our close integration with Cruise,” said General Motors Chairman and Ceo Mary Barra. “Together, we can provide Cruise  with the world’s best design, engineering and manufacturing expertise, and global reach to establish them as the leader in autonomous vehicle technology – while they move to deploy self-driving vehicles at scale.”

Testing e-trucks in Europe?

Waberer’s (vehicle operator in international full truckload transportation in Europe) is willing to test and is open to participate in the introduction of Tesla’s e-trucks in Europe.
Also, as the firsts from Europe, Waberer’s tested the Tesla Semi e-truck designed for long-distance transportation. Waberer’s and Paccar Group (supplier of Daf trucks) are discussing the testing and introduction of electric and driverless vehicles under development.
“We at Waberer’s are committed to continuous innovation and seize every opportunity participate in our partners’ R&D and innovation programs. Electric and driverless truck developments may significantly reduce the environmental impact of road transportation and have a favourable effect on the cost side at the same time. We see a great opportunity in developments concerning logistic infrastructure. In fact, we have effectively implemented several digital innovations in our operations”, said Ferenc Lajkó, Ceo of Waberer’s.