Tecnalia unveils totally electric car

1 June 2010

The Tecnalia Technological Corporation presented its experimental vehicle — ‘Dynacar’ — at the International Eco Friendly Vehicle & Sustainable Mobility Show in Madrid, held between 20 and 23 May.

Although it is a totally electric vehicle, Dynacar takes on board the possibility of integrating range extension concepts. Such a concept allows a battery or small internal combustion engine to supply energy to the car battery in a supplementary mode.

The car is a two-seater and has a complete instrument panel to validate systems relative to longitudinal and lateral dynamics. It uses a single-shell, high-rigidity lightweight chassis of steel and aluminium alloy, with an adjustable deformable parallelogram suspension system for the four wheels.

The vehicle has a peak power of 100kW provided by a permanent magnet synchronous electric motor, a total weight of 700kg and an energy storage capacity of 15kWh.

It is estimated that acceleration from 0 to 62mph is less than 5.7 seconds. The peak speed is approximately 87mph, reaching this figure in 10 seconds.

The vehicle will be adapted to run on the open road, but its main application is to act as a research platform for new concepts in high-powered electric traction, as well as active systems that enable maximum advantage to be taken of new propulsion systems, such as boost vectorisation or the concepts of distributed traction by means of incorporating in-wheel motors and regenerative braking.

The researchers who have devised Dynacar state that ‘the electrification of road transport is one of the priorities of the research, given that the dependence on fossil fuels and the greenhouse effect has focused everyone’s attention on the traditional concept of transport based on vehicles with conventional motor drive’.

Over the past five years the Tecnalia Corporation has been undertaking research into advanced configuration tools and the virtual evaluation of vehicles, in order to develop new solutions for electric and hybrid vehicles. Dynacar will be used to check the hypotheses used with high-performance electric and hybrid vehicles and to develop new concepts for vehicles of the future.