Battery change system for medium distance store delivery

This project is a part of the German government’s initiative “IKT für Elektromobilität III” (Einbindung von gewerblichen Elektrofahrzeugen in Logistik-, Energie- und Mobilitäts-Infrastrukturen).

The aim of this project is to extend the use of electric driven commercial vehicles (transport of goods field) to middle distances (300 km), as well as the inclusion of a long-range supply chain in distribution logistics using this kind of vehicles. Moreover, increasing the range might be an additional motivation for the fleet managers to include e-driven vehicles in their logistic processes. Previous field trials have shown that the vehicles are to be operated in a narrow logistic corset, typically as inner-city distribution vehicle characterised by low variance route ranges. Therefore is our major goal to design and implement a valid disposition concept, which guaranties the comparison in terms of versatility with typical combustion vehicle ones. With this changes we pretend to increase the acceptability of using e-driven vehicles and contribute to impulse the growth of the electric percentage within the fleets.

During the project a set of exchangeable battery stations are being installed every 150 km. They will cover an important route of our transport Partner “Meyer & Meyer”. A disposition-based charging control mechanism will ensure that the vehicles will not wait at the stations more time than battery exchange processes take. Moreover, an important requirement of the project is the charging station operating model. A certain added value is expected to be achieved by developing and operating a Dual-Use-Model for the charging station. The so-called Dual-Use-Model applies for both operating modes, as a normal charging station for the exchangeable batteries and as a balancing power provider. It will change significantly the results of a TCO analysis and has a great potential for enhancing the cost-effectiveness of e-drive commercial vehicles.

At DAI-Lab we are developing a distributed systems for an optimised Dual-Use operating model, which must monitor and control the stations for an optimal and secure allocation of the available capacity into the batteries or from/to the power grid.