New SAE International symposium on range extenders for electric vehicles
11 April 2016
SAE International will hold a new two-day symposium in Knoxville, Tennessee on 2-3 November 2016 on range extenders for electric vehicles (REX). Organized by Robert Wagner and Scott Curran of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Hugh Blaxill of Mahle Powertrain, “Range Extenders for Electric Vehicles” will include sessions on policy and regulation driving the design and implementation of prime movers for REX applications; unique and advanced prime movers (e.g., fuel cell stacks as well as engines); recent powertrain advances for enabling REX; infrastructure role on range extender options; and the future of REX from a prime mover perspective.
Reuben Sarkar, US Department of Energy (DOE) Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation, will provide the opening keynote. Sarkar oversees DOE’s EERE’s Sustainable Transportation area, which includes the Vehicle, Fuel Cell, and Bioenergy Technologies offices, representing an annual investment of more than $600 million.
Sarkar spent more than 10 years at General Motors where his last position was as lead design release engineer on the electric drive unit for the Chevy Volt.
The comparative advantages of FC stacks versus ICEs as range extenders would be interesting to see, regardless of current fuel availability?
Posted by: HarveyD | 11 April 2016 at 08:16 AM
Range extenders probably won't be used very much, so it does not matter if they are not perfect. They will mostly be used as generators so they can have limited efficiency RPM ranges and need maybe only 25-40 kw.
They need to be compact and cheap, and quiet and have maybe 2-300 miles worth of fuel.
The advantage is that you can then size your battery to daily average use, rather than "as much as possible". SO you might be able to get away with a 30KwH battery and a 200 mile range extender.
Posted by: mahonj | 11 April 2016 at 11:18 AM