It’s the time of year for the Commercial Vehicle Show, so there’s lots of van news. Today it’s the turn of LDV, and the company has announced that it will be introducing technology to its vehicles that will capture the energy lost in braking, and it will also be bringing an electric van to market.
The two new technologies will be available on the LDV Group’s MAXUS range of light commercial vehicles.
Working with RVL, LDV says that an electric powered version of MAXUS will be available as early as June this year.
The vehicles that will recycle energy lost during the braking process will do it through an electronic motor. Central to the technology is a DC-DC converter, which is promised to be more efficient, smaller and lower in cost than those currently available.
The DC-DC converter is being developed by a consortium of British companies led by motorsport specialist, Prodrive. The project is part funded by the Technology Strategy Board and also involves HILTech Developments, International Transformers, Sloan Electronics and the Universities of Manchester and Newcastle.
The DC-DC converter is designed for use with electric vehicles, or hybrids – ie. vehicles powered by small petrol or diesel engines and an electric motor. Hybrids have the ability to capture the energy lost during braking, to be reused later to power the electric motor, making them more efficient and less polluting than conventional vehicles. Current hybrid vehicles without DC-DC converters compromise the energy storage device (usually ultra capacitors or batteries) and the electric motor; when storing energy under braking, as the vehicle slows the voltage generated by the motor falls, while the energy in the storage device increases. There is a point when the motor can no longer supply enough voltage for the storage device so energy recovery after this point is no longer possible. The situation is the same when using the stored energy to power the motor to accelerate the vehicle.
A DC-DC converter balances the voltage between the motor and the energy storage device, boosting or reducing the voltage as necessary. This reclaims more of the energy under braking and provides more under acceleration, making the vehicle more efficient.
“Our converter will be designed for use with 50 kW systems,” said Pete James, electronics specialist at Prodrive. “This means it can provide an additional power boost of up to 67bhp, which allows a hybrid car to use a much smaller petrol engine without any loss in performance. The other exciting prospect is that such a system could be used instead of a turbo or supercharger on higher performance sports cars.”
Let’s hope that this is an example that the British Motor Industry can follow in making the most of the opportunities created by the need for greener vehicles. |
