The Electric Vehicles (r)evolution: past, present, and perspectives of E-cars

ABSTRACT

The seminar will discuss and explain some aspects of unquestioned growing popularity and use of electric vehicles in today's personal and public mobility.

An overview of electric propulsion systems through history from the first experiments and prototypes to actual solutions will be given to illustrate their ascends and falls, as well as reasons, why electric cars did not prevail the market in the past and even the time being. Special attention will be devoted to today's concepts and characteristics of cars on the market.

Detailed comparison of traditional (internal combustion) to electric and hybrid cars will reveal most advantages and disadvantages of both concepts in sense of drive specifications, usefulness, maintenance, reliability, safety and operating costs. New development trends of power trains' main components, which enable improved efficiency, range, autonomy and extended lifetime, will also be evaluated. Electric powered cars will definitely continue to improve and in the next few years we can expect to see more hybrid and pure electric vehicles on the roads. New solutions have to be found also in other research fields like producing electric energy from renewable sources, integration of vehicles' batteries into the future smart-grid systems, new wireless charging systems and self driving/parking abilities. Besides these technical features, also some social influence of new principles of human mobility to future communities of smart cities will be considered.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

http://www.fe.uni-lj.si/en/the_faculty/staff/associate_professors/90/