Development of a High Performance Electric Vehicle: Eliica

 

0305carf1.jpgAbstract: When the world's gasoline gauge tips towards "empty" in the coming decades, we are going to have to use a lot of imagination and creativity to compensate.  This, together with the needs to tackle current traffic issues such as air pollution, energy consumption, traffic accidents, and traffic jams, led us to find ways to improve today's automobiles. This includes the switch to electric vehicles, utilization of automatic drive systems, and the downsizing of these electric vehicles with automatic drives.  At Keio University in Japan, a high performance electric vehicle named “Eliica” (Electric Lithium Ion Car), a five passenger sedan, was developed from the ground up; lithum-ion batteries, permanent-magnet motors and IGBT inverters are used as driving components.  In-wheel motors are put in each eight wheels and all batteries and inverters are set in the frame structure under the floor.  Eliica has a maximum velocity of 370km/h and can accelerate  from 0 to 160 km/h in 7.0 seconds.

 

"Among concept cars, hybrid electric are still going strong, and more of them are being built with lithium-ion batteries rather than ….  The wildest lithium-ion vehicle so far has to be the luxury-sedan concept Eliica from Keio University in Japan, …..”  See “Top Tech Cars” in IEEE Spectrum, March 2005, page 22-30.

Professor Hiroshi Shimizu, born in 1947, graduated from the Graduate school of Tohoku University in 1975 in Applied Physics.  He joined the Ministry of Environment of the National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan, as a Researcher in 1976.  Since 1997, he is a Professor of Media and Governance in the Faculty of Environmental Information, Keio University.