With the
oil crisis of 1970s, which affected our day to day lives in unfathomable ways, the
transport industry too took a toll. A steep increase in the fuel prices meant less
use of personal vehicles and thus lesser profits for the automotive industry.
With no end in sight to the continuous and exponential rise in fuel prices, it was only in the
definite interest of the companies to shift from oil as a fuel to better alternatives.
Even though the idea of electric vehicles was prominent
then, with some prototypes in existence, the major issue was mileage. With the
meager coverage it gave, those cars were pretty useless other than for going
shopping inside the city. Long drives and top speeds, the very component of
thrill and adventure that car enthusiasts love about a drive was missing. There
was no adrenaline rush in Battery Electric Vehicles compared to the
traditional Internal Combustion Engine counterparts.
That is until, the TESLA
ROADSTER unveiled in 2008. This car caused a revolution. With top speeds of
200 kph and a mileage of 394 Km in a single charge, Tesla offered
the world, a way to escape the conventional cars and have a glimpse into the
future. Battery Electric Vehicles have
another advantage over Internal Combustion Engine counterparts other
than fuel. With lesser number of components and lesser complexity of operation,
it was easy to program the vehicles such that increased the efficiency of the
vehicle as a whole. With a battery acting as the main source and current
running the car, the need for certain analog and digital sensors was also required.
- The main component of an electric vehicle is the battery. With a battery acting as the source of energy and current running the car, the need for certain analog sensors was also required, mostly for measuring the current and voltage going into the brush-less motors and coming out through the battery.
- There is also a temperature sensor, for detecting high or a steep increase in the body frame of the car.
- Some Electric vehicles also have integrated GPS with them for navigation and use GPS sensors and a set of network assistance to connect the vehicle to the GPS.
- However, it is the Electric Parking Brake sensor, which increases the efficiency of the vehicle. Unlike the conventional ICE vehicles, the BEV’s have evolved over the ABS braking. The new braking system allows to convert the kinetic energy in applied breaking to be stored back as electricity in the batteries.
- Another important feature is the Body stability management system possessed by a lot of EVs which can avoid a sudden jerk in the frame providing comfort to the consumer.
- Also there are sensors for anti-theft and sensing tire pressures.
Another
important feature of the electric vehicles is the Longitudinal Velocity and
Road Slope Estimation System.
These sensors can be used for various
purposes, like distance measurement,velocity measurement, object detection,
lane detection and much more. The integration of these with the GPS and Braking
system can give the vehicle an utmost upper hand over the conventional vehicles
as these can make a car go complete auto pilot. That is, once you feed in the
coordinates, the car can drive it on its own.
Surely,
the sensors on their own are useless. It is their integration with a central
mainframe, that can control the car, that makes the vehicle a glimpse of the
future. With the processing power in our hands now a days, this was not a
problem and hence a central motherboard is what actually controls the BEVs.
The very fact that everything in a BEV is completely digital should
truly blow our minds. Unlike the conventional ICE vehicles, where
pushing the accelerator pedal causes oil to be pumped into the engine, which is
analog in nature, the BEV has a digital pedal. That is, the central
motherboard senses the displacement of the pedal and depending on that decides
how much voltage to pass to the motors. In auto pilot modes, it is the same
motherboard that can control the whole car without the need for a human
intervention.
With 5G en-route, a new possibility also arises. The low
latency of 5G could be utilized by EVs in a very interesting way. With a
ping of 0-3 microseconds, 5G can offer an opportunity of live detection of
other vehicles on the road by a car. This means a more efficient system of
self-driving cars across the globe can be used with less pressure on the
sensors on board a vehicle and rather on a central processing unit elsewhere in
the world that has the live time destination, speed, location, battery back-up,
etc details of all the cars in the world to provide an optimized navigation
path for every other car.
However, the design and
integration of such a digital system is complex and hence equally complex to
use. That is why companies are in need of exceptionally skilled, software
engineers. Ones who have the thirst to work in unknown fields. From writing the
basic kernel of operation of the system, to integrating all the sensors, to
managing the vehicles networking and communication systems.
But the most
important of them all would be to develop a Graphic User Interface, so
simple and elegant that the customer gets attracted to the design as well as
finds it easy to use. With EVs being an emerging field and many
countries already on their way to promote complete utilization of electric
vehicles by 2030, this emerging field provides lot of unexplored opportunities
to passionate engineers and creative artists.
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We at https://app.bigfix.in plan to be a agreegator of EV repair, service & maintenance.
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