What if car wheels were running completely individually? It's hard to believe that the car could follow a straight course, but believe it or not: This is already happening, and the car behaves like a sports car. A group of extremely motivated young engineers and scientists from Fortiss at the Munich Technical University developed an experimental platform for electro-mobility.
The electric vehicle of the future, as designed by fortiss, is based on both the eCorner concept, originally invented by former Siemens VDO, and the X-by-wire technology and comprises four individually controllable wheel hub motors, thus enabling entirely new movement sequences, like for example parallel parking (no silly jokes about women now, we all know that men can be worse).
"While they have been a standard in railroad applications for ages, many representatives of the automotive industry still do not seem to have confidence in wheel hub motors"; explains Dr. Christian Buckl, responsible for this project. He is convinced that if one took a closer look, "a number of advantages become evident for the use of these drives in modern electric cars". Because of that, former Siemens VDO (Siemens VDO eCorner, today Continental) took the decision several years ago to invest in the further development of wheel hub motors.
"The eCorner modules do not only comprise a motor that can also be used as a generator brake, but also suspension and steering and thus reduce the weight considerably", he carries on. Gear boxes, differentials, steering axles and drive shafts are no longer needed. Even the mechanical friction brakes can be made obsolete in a number of cases.
The electric car is entirely controlled via an IP-based communication network (X-by-wire). As a vehicle bus, a newly developed real-time protocol with time synchronisation, based on IEEE 1588 is being used. This real-time protocol has been specifically adapted to the requirements of electro-mobility.
It is one of the goals of the experimental platform to develop a data-centric architecture in order to reduce the communication overhead between the vehicle's functional elements. At the same time the network structure could be considerably simplified with a reduced number of control units, possibly by using multicore CPUs. Another more academic aspect is the exploration of various concepts of virtualisation of the control units, partly based on IMA architectures similar to current developments in avionics. The development and testing of mechanisms for error tolerance is another focus of the project in order to advance the vehicle's dependability and reliability.
The experimental platform weighs about 500 kg (approx. 1.150 lbs.). Its four eCorner modules provide a nominal power of 2 kW each and allow for a maximum speed of about 50 km/h (approx. 32 mph). Each drive brings a torque of 160 Nm on the street which makes the platform behave like a sports car.
Interesting technology. From what I have also read, 4WD cars can't really control all four wheels at a time, even so, an AWD car can't too. But I guess this technology is possible.
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Posted by: NRG Steering Wheels | 12/08/2011 at 05:16 PM
It is really so evident how our technology develops right now. This is interesting!
Posted by: CGS exhaust | 12/24/2011 at 04:24 AM
This blog has lots of knowledge to learn. This proves that technology nowadays really exits because of the so called "hi-tech". I really admire those young engineers and scientists for having developed an experimental platform for electro-mobility. It was great!
Posted by: NRG Steering Wheels | 01/27/2012 at 08:55 PM
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Posted by: NRG Hubs | 02/19/2012 at 03:51 PM