2023-07-11 04:31:12
Engineers from the National University of the Center of the Province of Buenos Aires (Unicen) developed an electric vehicle for urban use that works with lithium batteries and can be charged through home electricity and solar panels. All the electrical components, with the exception of the batteries, which are of Chinese origin, were conceived, designed and manufactured in the Faculty of Engineering. Two people fit in the car and, unlike traditional ones, it has three wheels. Although the device is already in operation, there are still some details to finish it.
The objective of the scientists is that this prototype can reach a serial manufacturing process and thus stop the use of fossil fuels for other energies that are sustainable, reduce pollution and contribute to the construction of the necessary infrastructure for when the vehicles are no longer manufactured. traditional.
“The end is the transfer to a company that wants to make these vehicles. We want the car to be salable and have a good amount on the road. Beyond the fact that for the University this development means showing technology and installed capacities, we demonstrate that electromobility is possible and is a local development in Argentina”, says Marcelo Spina, an engineer from the Olavarría School of Engineering (FIO) of Unicen and director of the Impulsa project on energy and sustainable mobility.
The vehicle has two types of battery recharging, a system for domestic use to connect it to 220 volts in any home with all the protections, and a sunroof that allows a small recovery of energy while the car is running or stopped. Both the management of the batteries and the panels are made in Olavarría.
Unlike the three available options that are on the market and are similar to the prototype developed by the FIO, this two-seater has two cargo options and is three-wheeled. Although the solar panels that were designed at the Faculty are not enough to fill the vehicle’s battery, since they should be larger than conventional cars, they allow partial recharging.
at the forefront
In order to install the solar panels in the car and prepare the entire electrical part, the researchers closely studied and followed different developments. Thus they became one of the first university laboratories in the country linked to electromobility. In 2022, they became the first public school in the entire country to install a publicly accessible electric vehicle charging point on the premises.
“Not only can any electric car enter, but it is totally free. It is also powered by solar energy, so one can come to charge their unit knowing that the power supply is totally clean”, emphasizes Nicolás Brizzio, electromechanical engineer at Unicen and head of the Faculty’s Electromobility Laboratory.
This development earned them a link with the Argentine Association of Electric Vehicles and in January 2023 they received a visit from a Tesla brand electric car that traveled the continent from Alaska to Ushuaia and passed through the premises of the Faculty of Engineering to recharge it and continue on its way. .
In fact, says Brizzio, in the Laboratory they develop a management system that allows optimizing the performance of the batteries and is “very similar” to the one used by Tesla. “We do everything, both the hardware and the software of the car. Once we have it, we take it to the streets and put it to the test”, he highlights.
A legal framework
To validate the circulation of a car on the street, there is a Model Configuration License, a procedure that consists of a test where it is put to the test and it is verified that it brakes, that it has seat belts, that it has lights and that the intensity is the appropriate one, among other requirements. However, describes the director of the Laboratory, electric cars lack their own standard.
“A very nice challenge was posed to us and we began to work with the National Institute of Industrial Technology. This is how we wrote the manual of good engineering practices to make electric vehicles, whether converted or manufactured in national industries”, Brizzio points out.
In this sense, the engineer says that the technical part can be solved and that the Faculty is in good conditions. However, for electromobility to penetrate the Argentine automotive fleet, the legal part must first be considered. “We were pioneers in the country and we became one of the first nations to think about how to validate this class of vehicles.”
The first one doesn’t always win
The three-wheeled two-seater vehicle is not a new idea, but rather occurs within the framework of a story linked to electric mobility that was born in 2010 when Marcelo Spina received an email to participate in the Atacama Solar Challenge, an electric car race with lithium batteries that were recharged with solar panels. In this way, the Faculty accepted the challenge and the following year took the solar vehicle called Pampa Solar I to Chile to compete in the desert.
This event aroused the interest of students and teachers. From then on, many of the practical works of the subjects were oriented to Pampa Solar I. In 2012 the race was repeated and the University participated with a completely improved car that included among its innovations a battery management system called BMS (Battery Management System) to maximize vehicle power and optimize performance.
“In this context we were able to demonstrate that the encapsulation of solar panel cells was more efficient than the commercial cells that were available on the market and we created our own”, recalls Spina. One of the outstanding points of the race, which began in Santiago de Chile and ended in Arica, on the border with Peru, is that the one who arrived first did not win, but the one who consumed the least energy. On that occasion, the Unicen team won the prize for the best use of solar resources in Latin America for creating its own panels and for the best use of lithium for the development of the BMS.
In recent years, Brizzio has participated as an overseer and prosecutor for electric car races held in the United States, Europe and Africa. In one of the competitions, the researcher observed a car that caught his attention. “On the outside it was a spaceship and when I asked the cost they told me one and a half million euros. However, the electrical part was the same as ours”, recalls the researcher.
Both engineers agree that indigenous electronic development is on a par with the best teams in the world: “We are in a position to produce vehicles with a much lower budget but technologically the same”, they emphasize.
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