SIEMENS

January is gray in Munich. Rain pounds on the car roof and water kicks up under the fenders. The noise seems louder than normal, however, because the vehicle itself doesn’t make a sound. Instead, it glides along in complete silence. The small green-and-white car known as a “movE” is one of 20 test vehicles now being driven by Siemens employees in Munich and Erlangen. Underneath its hood is a 56-kilowatt electric drive system, enough to reliably power the diminutive 1,300-kilogram automobile — assuming that the driver shifts properly when trying to edge into the passing lane, that is...

The after-work commuter traffic is heavy, and car after car drives by. Finally there’s a break. The driver shifts into first and…movE glides at a frighteningly slow pace across the intersection. But wait! The driver has forgotten that first gear is actually meant for maneuvering out of a parking space. If you want to sprint from zero, you’re better off in second gear. Hitting the gas pedal hard instantly pushes you back into your seat. So second gear is just fine for driving around town; it’ll even get you up to 90 kilometers per hour easily. In reality, electric cars don’t even need a transmission. Still, the first movE models have one, as they are special versions of the Suzuki Splash conventional vehicle. In just a few months, the next generation of electric cars will take off in a flash without gear shifting.

Klaus Orsolleck has gotten used to the idiosyncrasies of his movE, which he has been test-driving since November 2010. About 200 employees applied to take part in the largest Siemens fleet test to date, one that will include as many as 100 vehicles by 2012. The goal of the “4-Sustainelectromobility” (4-S) project, as it is known, is to find out how electric vehicles can be integrated into everyday traffic, and which challenges still remain. “Driving this car is really a lot of fun,” says Orsolleck, a computer scientist. “My son is getting his driver’s license and he’s already excited about driving the movE. Nothing about the car indicates its significance for the environment, and young people simply think it’s cool.” Orsolleck was selected for the test program because his profile precisely corresponded to what the company was looking for. For one thing, the distance from his home to his workplace was ideal. Orsolleck lives in western Munich and commutes daily to his job in Neuperlach, some 20 kilometers away in the southeastern part of the city. He used to travel by commuter train — now he guides his movE through rush-hour traffic. “I was thrilled by the idea of being part of the development of electric mobility,” he says.

“This market is interesting for Siemens because we’ve got the needed expertise in all areas — from electricity generation in power plants to power transmission, electric drives, and end consumers,” says Andreas Romandi, 4-S project manager at Corporate Technology. “Electric mobility will be a huge market in the future and we want to be at the cutting edge of developments.” (See Pictures of the Future, Spring 2010, All Charged Up). The 4-S project addresses all the components of future electric mobility scenarios — but not all at once, of course. The 100 vehicles in the project will be put on the road gradually, and each new project phase will involve the addition of new technical components. For example, Orsolleck still recharges his movE battery with 230-volt alternating current from a socket at home. After getting home in the evening, he uncoils a cable and plugs it into his car, whose battery is fully recharged six hours later. Soon, however, he will have a so-called wallbox installed in his garage — a three-phase connection with a charging output of 11 kilowatts. This will charge his 22-kWh battery in about two hours. The setup only requires laying a single cable from the house grid connection to the garage.

Fully Charged. Charging is one of the key issues being addressed in 4-S, whose main participants are a Siemens smart grid project group and the Energy and Industry Sectors. “We want to find out how the power grid and electric vehicles interact, which is why we’re developing various applications and business models for vehicle-grid interplay,” says Ralph Griewing, head of eCar Infrastructure at Energy. This includes the charging stations, which are ready for market launch and have already been installed in several locations around Munich, Erlangen, and Berlin. The utility company in Erlangen is also involved in these activities.

The challenge is to ensure reliable communication between driver, vehicle, and charging station. For one thing, the station needs to recognize that a vehicle is actually connected, since safety considerations preclude electricity from flowing if this is not the case. In addition, the driver must be identified to ensure that the supply company knows whom to bill. It’s like cell phone billing, says Griewing: “Depending on where we are, we make calls via different networks through roaming, but we only receive one bill at the end of the month from our provider. That’s the way car battery charging will be billed in the future.”

Siemens is currently building a network operation center in Fürth, Germany that will begin monitoring communication between test vehicles and the electricity suppliers in mid- 2011. Similar centers are already being operated by car fleet providers, whose vehicles are generally unlocked by customers with a chip card that also activates the onboard computer, which then establishes contact with the center via radio. “As a systems supplier, Siemens can also handle such functions with its operation center,” says Griewing. “In this case, the owner of an electric vehicle fleet — for example, a municipality — wouldn’t have to manage the cars itself, and this would make the transition to electric vehicles more attractive and convenient.” In such a system, each car would be equipped with an onboard computer — a kind of navigation system with electric mobility functionality. Drivers would use the computer to reserve charging station time or to request information about the nearest station. The system could also notify the center about defective charging stations. The center, in turn, could send data about the current charge level to the driver’s cell phone in response to questions such as: “Is the vehicle fully charged? Can I make a quick stop at the supermarket?”

New Applications for Power. Commercial and residential buildings are an area where new developments can be expected. Researchers are investigating the use of networks of tiny sensors to transmit data on parameters such as temperature and CO2 concentrations to an intelligent building management system (see article "Instant Communities"). Thus equipped, a new generation of smart buildings could become active agents on the power market and automatically adjust their consumption to fluctuating supplies of solar and wind energy. As a recent study by Siemens and the Technical University of Munich shows, such a vision is by no means unrealistic (see article "Automation’s Ground Floor Opportunity"). The study demonstrates that it is perfectly feasible to ramp down air conditioning and heat pumps without compromising comfort within a building.

Solid Reserve. Orsolleck has gotten used to the new ways of thinking that go along with electric mobility. He knows that a full charge will power his movE for around 120 kilometers if he doesn’t drive too fast. When the “20 percent” light goes on, it means he’s running on reserve power. “I’ve never gotten stuck,” he says, “but I don’t like driving with the reserve light on. So I always check Google Maps before I visit friends to make sure I know how far it is.” Orsolleck has developed a good sense of the car’s range. On cold days, the battery is a little weaker. “But you hardly notice it with the distance for my commute — I always come home with a 66 percent charge,” says Orsolleck. Nevertheless there is one drawback. On frosty days, the windshield ices up because the electric heater doesn’t get as hot as the exhaust heat generated by a combustion engine. It’s problems like these that make clear just how important it is to conduct fleet trials under real-life conditions. The Orsolleck family still uses its gasoline-powered VW for longer trips — but more and more of its shorter trips are taken with the movE. “The car is ideal for what we need to do in the city,” says Orsolleck. But you still need to consider alternatives for longer distances, he adds, and mentions car sharing or car rental as possibilities.

One of Siemens’ project partners is Sixt Leasing, which manages the company’s electric car fleet. If an e-car breaks down, Sixt takes care of the towing and provides a replacement car as soon as possible. Sixt Board member Mark Thielenhaus says 4-S is a pilot project that’s on target and important: “The market is still in its infancy, but we’re already seeing demand from company car pools,” he says, referring to Munich and the Erlangen-Nuremberg areas, where employees often drive back and forth between branch offices. The challenge, says Thielenhaus, lies in providing fast service. “We already have a Germany-wide network of 2,500 authorized service and repair centers for conventional cars. Such a network still has to be built for electric vehicles. We’re still experimenting, but in two or three years we should see a serious market develop,” he says.

Fast Charging. Initial experience with 4-S shows that e-cars are ready for everyday operation in and around cities. But several questions remain open. For example: What’s the best charging technology? CT developers are working with BMW on three charging modes — alternating current (AC), direct current (DC), and induction (see Pictures of the Future, Fall 2010, Get a Charge!). The problem is that European and international standards have yet to be drawn up. The AC system has the charging technology in the vehicle, which affects the price of the car. With DC, the battery can be rapidly charged in the vehicle without a charging regulator, which in this case is in the charging station. There’s no clear agreement at the moment as to where the charging unit should be installed — i.e. in the vehicle or outside of it. Induction charging is also a promising alternative. Here, the battery is charged in a convenient manner via an electric field without a cable. The problem is that the energy must bridge the air gap between the charging unit and the battery, which results in electrical losses. Siemens is working on a solution with BMW in an induction project funded by Germany’s Ministry of Research. This will undergo testing in mid-2011 in Berlin.

Siemens researchers are also working on rapid charging features that channel electricity into the battery with greater power. Such a function would reduce charging times to only minutes. At present, the fastest Siemens charging station — which has a power of 22 kilowatts — takes around one hour to fully recharge a battery. That’s already double the speed of the previous generation of chargers.

Orsolleck charges his car at the company parking lot during the day and at a household socket at night. This is more than enough for his needs — and probably those of many other drivers. “We believe that electric vehicles will slowly take over the automobile market — initially as second cars for use in the city,” Romandi says. “We also expect around 1.5 million purely electric vehicles to be on the road in Germany by 2020.” Romandi is certain the automobile market will become more varied. Hybrids — vehicles with both gasoline and electric motors — are expected to become the cars of choice for all types of use. On the other hand, an economical diesel might remain ideal for a salesman on the road.

Grid Challenges. Prof. Martin Wietschel is the director of the Energy division at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research in Karlsruhe. He believes the extensive expansion of electric mobility will cause problems with power grids in local communities. “If ten electric cars on a street charge their batteries at the same time, it will overload older local transformers,” Wietschel explains. Griewing agrees, and that’s why the 4-S project team is working on an intelligent charging control system for ensuring that not all vehicles in an area attempt to maximize there charging simultaneously when drivers hook up to the grid in the evening. Moreover, an intelligent meter in a wallbox would enable charging in line with the latest electricity prices, whereby power would be cheapest when TVs and washing machines are turned off at night and industrial facilities have shut down.

Wietschel advises caution, however. “It has yet to be shown that customers will go for such a pricing model,” he says, explaining that they would have to pay close attention to varying electricity rates: “If the economic gain is marginal, many consumers might lose interest.” Still, Siemens researchers point out that the required intelligence can be put into the car itself, which means the vehicle would need just a small amount of information from the driver to make a decision as to when electricity is cheap enough. Romandi is confident the project will ultimately come up with the right answers to all of these questions. Test drivers are initially leasing the vehicles at a very favorable price for a period of 30 months; the fee includes electricity, maintenance, insurance, and potential repair center costs. Siemens continually incorporates its latest research results and technologies into the project. It’s still not known how much new knowledge 4-S will yield, Romandi says.

Wolfgang Geus, chairman of the Erlangen power utility project partner, has a similar view. “We’re using electric vehicles to find out whether all the requirements for the cars, including charging infrastructure and low-voltage network, can be met. The challenges involve the influence of weather conditions on battery performance and lifespan, charging options in private and public garages, billing models, and load processes in the low-voltage network,” he says. Siemens intends to get as many companies as possible involved in the project. Germany E-Cars is currently providing the vehicles. Siemens plans to install its own inverters with a charging feature, as well as drive system components, in the coming generation of 4-S cars. This will ensure that the vehicles themselves will have more “Siemens inside.”