Author:

Keywords:

charging, infrastructure, environment, efficiency, energy source

Abstract:

A typical breakdown cover service unit in Belgium has to assist up to 5 cars a day that end up with an empty fuel tank. As the range of today’s battery electric cars is lower than what people are used to have today, breakdown cover services expect that massive introduction of electric cars will lead to a multiple of EVs ending up with an empty battery. This paper reports about a research project, initiated by a Belgian breakdown cover service, that aimed to design and build a prototype of a fast and an energy efficient intervention car for EVs with empty batteries. For the prototype a CNG van is equipped with a hybrid power system enabling efficient energy injections for electric vehicles with slow as well as fast charging possibilities. The prototype is equipped with charging infrastructure providing mode 1, 2 and 3 charging. The paper starts with a description of the prototype design. The main part gives a detailed comparison of three EV breakdown cover service methods: towing the EV, energy injection on the spot by a diesel genset on a diesel truck and energy injection with the designed prototype. For a typical breakdown cover service day, the prototype turns out to be 12% faster, consumes 41% less energy and reduces emissions by 68% in comparison with towing.