A team led by Better Place has been awarded funds totalling €5M for deploying battery-swap stations in Europe for electric vehicles. The 2.5-year project, named Greening the European Transportation Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles, is being supported by the EC’s DG Move transport directorate.
Battery-swap stations will be implemented in Amsterdam and Copenhagen through the new project. In addition, a pan-European deployment plan for battery-swap stations will also be developed and the project will assess the political measures needed to accelerate deployment of “open access” electric vehicle infrastructure of battery charging and swapping stations.
EV infrastructure developer Better Place is leading the project consortium that also includes FCC Construccion of Spain, Verbund of Austria, Elia System of Belgium, DSB Kommercial and the Technical University of Denmark. “Telematics and the Connected Car has a crucial role to play in supporting the deployment of electric vehicles so that the inherent inconvenience of charging or swapping batteries is minimised,” says Stephen Longden, ITS & telematics specialist at SBD. “Connectivity will be used to coordinate the battery/charging needs of EVs and the available local infrastructure that can support them.”
“Many vehicle manufacturers such as Nissan, Renault and Toyota have already developed connectivity strategies for their EVs,” says Longden. “Renault and Better Place have a history of joint development of charging and battery-swap services across the world,” he notes. These EV connectivity issues will be discussed comprehensively in SBD’s forthcoming report, The future of connected EV infrastructure and how the car can connect to it. This new report, due for release in August, will follow up the trends identified in our well received report, Understanding the opportunities and challenges for EV telematics.
The Better Place-led project will produce a roadmap for the creation of a pan-European electric car infrastructure and multi-modal links. For example, trials in Denmark will link the rail network with battery-swap and charging infrastructure located at train stations. This Danish system is scheduled for launch at the end of 2011.
To register your interest in The future of connected EV infrastructure and how the car can connect to it or to buy Understanding the opportunities and challenges for EV telematics please contact Kavitha at kkuppuswamy@sbd.co.uk.