Electric Horizons
- Details
- Category: World News
- Published on Tuesday, 24 May 2011 11:31
- Written by Tejas Joseph
- Hits: 10820
The advent of electric vehicles is going to change the face and form of vehicle design itself. It will facilitate a whole new transportation environment characterized by silent vehicles that are quick and non polluting.
Freedom from the internal combustion engine (the mainstay of our current transportation vision and genre) offers freedom to developers to conceptualize an electric vehicle in totally new ways. For the first time possibly in the history of automobile design vehicles are going to wear forms that are not just radical but present a complete departure from established automobile design trends and norms. We are likely to witness a quantum jump into a futuristic world through the portals of EV design facilitated by EV technologies that are radically different from conventional IC technologies.
The IC engine ,the heart of the standard conventional automobile, symbolic of our most desired means of motorised mobility,will be replaced by small electric motors on the wheels And batteries. In the process a great amount of space will be freed up that can influence design changes in passenger seating configurations and even the shape of the vehicle itself. With time batteries will get not just better but less bulkier. Their storage will increase permitting greater distances to be covered on a single charge. Regenerative braking (already a feature in the Toyota Prius,Nissan Leaf and other hybrids) will have improved and likely be accompanied by other mechanisms (regenerative shock absorbers for e.g,already being tested successfully on trucks) that generate and supplement an electric vehicle's on-board store of energy. The development of fuel cells and solar panels can also influence vehicle design in new and unexpected ways. Photo-voltaic energy harvesting devices on the roof of a car could perhaps cause a parked vehicle to spread upwards in order to maximise its exposure to the sun. New vehicle shapes are being tested in electric and hybrid concept cars from Volks Wagen,Peugeot and lesser known (but highly perceptive and innovative) EV makers. The oval or egg shape is catching on as a favorite not only for its design uniqueness but for its efficiency in harvesting/storing new energy modules and technologies like fuel cells and solar film or chip arrays .
The upcoming Electric Vehicles (Land,Sea and Air) 2011 awards event to be held in Germany next month will give EV enthusiasts a sneak peek at EV technologies and developments that will define tomorrow's motoring trends and vehicles based on electric technologies. This event, to be held in Stuttgart in the end of June, offers developers and innovators a forum to showcase new advances in various categories of EV technology– from novel vehicle design and materials to revolutionary battery and charging technologies. For details see www.idtechex.com