Review - Eco-Mobility 2016

Review

This was Eco-Mobility 2016 under the Motto “Feasible Propulsion and Vehicle Technologies versus Political Visions”.

In the opening, Mag. Schädler from bmvit congratulated A3PS for the successful 10 years of A3PS. He acknowledged A3PS being more valuable than ever before since the next 10 years might be even more challenging than the past 10 years had been. The ministry is willing to support A3PS in the future but also demands solutions for the society!

In a special speech, Klaus Fronius demonstrated on the examples of a welding transformer and a control unit how impressive changes in technologies took place over the last decades. He narrated about the “journey to the moon” he took together with few researches and how they developed “from a blank sheet of paper” towards a brilliant concept about hydrogen. As a founding member of A3PS, he told the audience that he believes in A3PS as a well-organized partnership which offers support “because you cannot do all by yourself”. He approached the audience with the idea to warn and prepare our supply industry about the upcoming changes in a common effort.

We will take the challenge! 

Keynotes “Technical Trends for Future Vehicles

"Monsieur 800 Volt" Klaus Rechberger explained Porsche’s approach to make electric vehicles more attractive: With 800 Volts! Increasing the vehicles’ range and allow fast charging everywhere.

Guillaume Berthier gave an insight about Renault’s approach to offer affordable electric cars already now. He agreed with Mr. Rechberger, that 85 % of the costumers ask for a range of at least 500 km, but 50 % would already be fine with 300 km.

Jörg Wind presented “Daimler’s road to FCEV Market Introduction” and pointed out that the high cost of both Fuel Cell Cars and Hydrogen Infrastructure would be the main reason why European manufacturers do not offer FC cars in the market yet. To face this challenge, H2 initiative Germany was founded with the goal to install 400 public filling stations until 2023 in Germany.

Thiebault Paquet carried out “Toyota’s View on the Future Powertrain”. Toyota puts its focus not only on hybrid electric cars like the Prius. He stated the co-existence of HVs, PHVs, and FCV development.

Stefanie Pyka (Bosch) gave us an import about the “Future of Mobility” with more possibilities for human-vehicle communication and multi-modality. As a forecast: The future will be electrified, automated & connected!

Keynotes “Politics and Market

Andrea Ricci (isiNNova) in his function as support and adviser to the European Commission at generating research programs highlighted that future of transport interlinks with the future of cities. As the most important challenge, he sees the need of understating inter-relations.

John Farrell told us about NREL’s approach of “Co-Optimization of Fuels and Engines”. Engine Experiments and Simulations as well as databases on fuel properties (,…) and a scenario construction are used in an “Optimizer” how to find optimal fuel and blend formulations.

Last but not least Gianni Lopez presented the challenges but also the importance of everything that has been discussed within the last two days for developing countries. Busses as important transport system in the cities of Latin America produce 30 % of NOx and particle emissions because of low standards and fuel quality. Therefore, the ambitious goal of the AMF Annex “Sustainable Bus Systems” is to introduce advanced technologies and promote Euro VI as well as alternative Propulsion Systems in developing countries.

Specialist Presentations:

Propulsion Technologies

Peter Prenninger (AVL): “All laws of nature are known and we are aware of the problem. But we still do not accept it.” Mr. Prenninger showed his personal “Scenario 2050”. Efficiency is most important – now and in the future and R&D to minimize losses is essential.

Eberhard Schutting (TU Graz) presented a well-to-wheel comparison of propulsion systems stating BEVs most efficient in terms of his well-to-wheel comparisons.

Nigel Foxhall (ROTAX) presented the “Potential of Different Injection Systems for High Performance Two-Stroke Engines” facing challenges, which require further technology development in order to fulfill future emission legislation while increasing effiency.

Prof. Geringer showed short-, mid, and long-term future scenarios including all powertrain systems including combustion engines and sees applications with combustion engines running on regenerative fuels as an alternative parallel to electrified powertrains in a long-term perspective.

Walter Schmidt gave an interesting insight into Samsung’s activities in the Area of battery cells, modules, and packs for different applications like BEV, PHEV and HEVs from 12 Volts up to 800 Volts.

Vehcile Technologies incl. ADAS  

Christian Chimani (AIT) presented the “Technology Ecosystem of Automated Driving” which offers many opportunities but also needs to face challenges such as scenarios with connected an non-connected vehicles within the next years.

Andreas Schmid (swarco) explained the role of infrastructure for connected vehicles such as benefits of having cars communicating with traffic lights.

Joachim Taiber (iTiC) expects a paradigm shift going from vehicle centered to infrastructure centered and sees “in motion charging” as one opportunity to get energy from infrastructure to the vehicle without the need to stop for recharging.

Prof. Stiller presented amongst other topics videos about how his research group at Karlsuruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) made vision-based autonomous driving possible on the “bertha Benz memorial route” using exact maps.

Another method to enable autonomous driving was presented by Serkan Arslan (NVIDIA) and explained us how they trained the system to recognize items by deep-learning.

On the 2nd conference day we had two speakers from IEA “Advanced Motor Fuels” together with 2 Austrian hydrogen competence representatives together in the session about advanced motor fuels.

Advanced Motor Fuels

Nils-Olof Nylund (VTT) presented results of three AMF Annexes including results from experiments performed in laboratories from different countries providing well-to-wheel analysis for different fuels and vehicles.

Helga Prazak-Reisinger (OMV) presented the advantages of hydrogen and presented the R&D plant in Auersthal, which produces hydrogen via electrolysis using renewable excess electricity.

Manfred Klell (HyCentA) carried out, why there is no way without hydrogen and that it is possible to replace fossil fuels with renewables in all sectors. “Hydrogen is not the future – it is ready to be used now.”

Henning Lohse Busch (Argonne) presented real driving emissions and fuel consumption results from his research at Argonne National Lab for plug-in hybrids. Fuel consumption changes depending on how far you drive and how you drive!

Conclusion

The change in mobility will happen. It is inevitable! We have to face it and start to work on this challenge together!