RAEng to fund research into electric vehicles for India

As part of a project with two private universities in India, Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) and PSG College of Technology, both located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, engineers from Loughborough have been funded to take part in the project to develop electric vehicle technology suitable for hot climates. The project will see Prof Rui Chen, Prof Jin Xuan and Ashley Fly of the University’s School of aeronautical, automotive, chemical and materials engineering work on the design and development of a four-wheeled electric vehicle for research, teaching and outreach in India.

Emissions from vehicles cause problems for the global climate and local pollution, the latter of which is a serious risk to health in the fast-growing and traffic-choked cities of India. Air pollution is most effectively tackled by electric vehicles, which produce zero emissions in use, but they have difficulty operating in South Asia because lithium-ion batteries perform best at 25°C ambient temperature and degrade very rapidly when it is hotter. In India, where temperatures can exceed 45°C, they tend to last as little as two to three years. This also damages the country’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, although the potential of electric vehicles to contribute to reductions could only be realised if the energy to charge the batteries were sourced from low-carbon generation.