Electric Vehicles (EV)

EV's are being discussed everywhere in the media at the moment. This is a fast moving industry with new products and technologies appearing every day. Electric Vehicles emit less pollution than petrol driven vehicles, so they are a good solution to solve the problem in reducing carbon emission in transport. The UK want to be emission free by 2040 and Electric cars areone way to meet this target.

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Basically, an engine which uses a fuel cell are electric vehicles and this technology is becoming a really important innovation nowadays.

An electric car uses the electromotive force from the electric motor to drive. This motor receives the necessary energy thanks to a battery or others devices. An EV is known to have a better acceleration than a vehicle which uses the power of oil, but the autonomy is shorter. They usually require daily charging times, or at intervals when used at long distances at a local EV charging point.

An electric car works without emitting gas or noise. That is why it could be a good solution to reduce the transport’s environmental footprint.

There are three types of EV:

• Electric vehicles receive power from an external power station, for example a tram.
• Or an EV with a battery to store electricity from an external source, for example an electric van.
• And those who have directly a generator in the electric vehicle, for example a solar car.

The most common kind of EV is the second type, with batteries to store the energy from another source. The electric motor receives power from a controller, which changes the power sent to the motor as a function of the driver action on the acceleration pedal. The electric vehicle uses the batteries' energy which are recharged by household electricity.

The batteries capacity is from 15 to 200kWh. With this range, the electric car could work between 100km to 300km. This number depends of the driving type (use of lights, heat, big accelerations, etc).

To charge the EV batteries you need an external source of electricity. For that, you can use an electric vehicle charging point.

There are four modes to charge your electric car:

• Mode 1: In this charging mode, you can provide energy either from single-phase or three-phase A.C. In this one, you use a simple charging cable without a control box. This cable uses a standard socket outlet like the one you find in your home, so this mode works either with charging equipment or with a domestic outlet.

• Mode 2: This mode is the same as the first one but uses a different charging cable with an in-cable control box incorporating an RCD.

• Mode 3: You can supply energy either from a single-phase or three-phase A.C. The difference in this mode is because it uses a dedicated socket-outlet or a charging cable tethered. For this kind of installation, of course, you cannot use a domestic outlet. It only works with a special charging point. In the charging cable, additional conductors are incorporated to communicate between the charger and the vehicle. With this, the verification of the protective conductor is to facilitate and allow a good selection of power when the charge starts.

•  Mode 4: In this mode the charging point converts AC current to DC directly (in the others, the AC current is converted by the EV). It uses a tethered charging cable and a dedicated vehicle inlet and vehicle connector. Because the current sent to the vehicle is DC, the battery directly receives this current. This is really fast - chargers allow a charging time of around twenty minutes.