The innovations from the ECOCHAMPS project have resulted in efficient, compact, low weight and cost effective hybrid powertrains for both passenger cars and commercial vehicles, which make European road vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers more competitive in hybrid vehicle technology.
The hybrid vehicle demonstrators developed in ECOCHAMPS were targetted to achieve a 20% powertrain efficiency improvement, and a 20% powertrain weight and volume reduction, with respect to the ‘best in class’ hybrid vehicles on the market in 2013, whilst having a maximum 10% cost premium over the conventional vehicle. It should be noted that specific targets, leading to progress beyond the state-of-the-art, vary per demonstrator vehicle in detail, due to the wide range of vehicles worked on.
End User Requirements (EUR’s) and Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) have been defined to meet the expectations of the end users with the forthcoming developments and to generate a starting point for the developments within ECOCHAMPS. These requirements ensured the practicability of the developed vehicles. All vehicle evaluations have been supervised by ‘Golden Engineers’, independent technical experts from Ricardo or the Joint Research Centre (JRC), who assessed validation methods and the results compared to the targets.
Besides the optimal specification of the demonstrator vehicles based on the EUR’s, further cost reduction of the heavy duty vehicles in the project has been achieved by the introduction of the Modular System and Standardization Framework (MSF). The MSF is a modular pre-standard framework that, for the first time, recommends standards for hybrid electric drivetrain components for commercial vehicles. Standardisation requirements have been identified for each hybrid electric component developed in ECOCHAMPS and, in a cooperation between both passenger car and heavy duty vehicle manufacturers and suppliers, resulted in agreements on system voltage levels, interfaces (electrical, mechanical and communications), lifetime expectations, performance classes etc. The standards resulting from the pre-normative research performed in ECOCHAMPS are a sound basis for official standards to be published by Standards Organisations as well as a good starting point for new component developments. For this purpose, the MSF document will be available via the European Council of Automotive R&D (EUCAR), as well as via the project website: www.ecochamps.eu.
The project achievements include the development of six new hybrid electric components based on the MSF and five powertrains, which have been demonstrated in five vehicles at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 7. The results show that a significant CO2 reduction is possible, whilst offering valuable additional functionality to the end customer. Examples of results are the proven benefits of plug-in hybrid powertrains across different vehicle segments. For passenger cars, the use of 48V instead of high-voltage components is proven to be a viable alternative. Passenger car based battery modules and inverters have been applied in heavy duty vehicles, proving their feasibility and unlocking the potential of their volume of scale. And lastly, the ECOCHAMPS proposals for the standardisation of hybrid-electric components (MSF) show a relevant cost reduction potential for hybrid commercial vehicles.
