Liberty Electric Cars, a Europe-based subsidiary of Green Automotive Company, has successfully built up the first fully functioning example of “DELIVER” - an electric delivery vehicle, marking a new age of urban commercial transportation.
The DELIVER project is funded in November 2011 by the European Commissions’ 7th Framework Programme which brings together ten partner companies from across Europe. Its goal is to reduce the environmental impact in urban areas by 40 % and thus design and construct an electric light commercial vehicle which perfectly combines the needs of inner city traffic with the advantages of electric vehicles. The result is a light weight commercial vehicle of 2,200 kg GVW and a payload of 700 kg, with a host of innovative features for the delivery driver and 18% additional capacity when compared with today’s vans of a similar wheelbase.
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| The DELIVER concept car (Photo Credit: Green Automotive Company) |
DELIVER’s concept deploys the latest electric vehicle technologies with its fully electric drive train featuring in-wheel motors with 2-speed transmission and 80 prismatic Li-NMC cells in its battery pack to increase energy efficiency and total range. The vehicle perfectly meets the demands of today’s busy delivery drivers. There is a decrease in both workload and the duration of the delivery process itself thanks to its flexible ergonomic cabin concept and removal of the B pillar on the kerb side. The ability for the driver to easily exit the vehicle on the kerb side not only minimizes walking distances around the vehicle, but improves driver safety. The “Walk in door” concept reduces potential obstacles caused by the door sills. With a minimum range of 100 km and a top speed of 100 km/h, DELIVER represents a proposition for light commercial vehicles with urban and intra urban applications such as postal, parcel, supermarket and city council service operations.
After executing a broad conceptual design study which started by establishing initial design specifications and continued right through to the detailed virtual performance assessment of the final fully electric vehicle concept, a driving demonstrator concept vehicle was built by Liberty Electric Cars to demonstrate as many of the new vehicle innovations as possible. Liberty Electric Cars, chosen to participate because of its extensive experience in electric commercial vehicle engineering, were nominated Chief Engineers of the design of the vehicle and played a key role in the development of the battery, the battery management system and the integration of all the vehicle electrical systems in the development of this vehicle.
An extended testing phase on the test tracks at the Aldenhoven Testing Center, RWTH Aachen University’s new testing ground, enabled the project partners to analyze performance indicators such as energy efficiency, dynamic & static structural performance, active & passive safety, ergonomics or range.
The project, which is co-funded by the European Commission as part of the European Green Vehicles Initiative, is coordinated by Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika) of RWTH Aachen University and gathers ten partners from across Europe, including major OEMs, research partners and cities’ representatives. The consortium comprises Fiat (IT), Volkswagen (DE), Liberty Electric Cars (UK), Michelin (CH), Polis Network (BE), SP – Technical Research Institute of Sweden (SE), HPL Prototypes (UK) as well as CADEM (TR) und Mobit (TR).