in association with
Tual has developed an LCV solution to deal with EV range and on-board power issues
TRANSITIONING TO AN EV FLEET – VANS
NEXT GENERATION
The wave of new EV-related technology and services are conferring benefits to the LCV sector, both in terms of future-proofing vehicle operations and by catering to specific extra power requirements that individual fleets may have...
The arrival of the new Renault Master Electric later this year will mark another step towards a complete electric model range for the company, while its new FlexEVan project will also be addressing the last-mile delivery sector. As Renault’s Zakaria Zeghari, VP global sales and marketing LCV, told VFW: “With FlexEVan we jump into the next generation of light commercial vehicles.”
“It’s a completely new platform and the idea is to bring to the market a new generation of product based on a skateboard. This means 100% ready for customisation for our customers in terms of conversions but also in terms of software because it’s a brand new open electronic architecture that is capable of welcoming the IPs and all the fleet management systems of customers. So it’s here as an answer to more and more regulation, more and more complexity in access to cities and very importantly the growth of last mile delivery needs in the years to come. We have different shapes that will be presented in good time.”
The new Master launched at the CV Show and Renault’s FlexEVan is due to follow as the manufacturer revises its electric van range
“It’s all about range anxiety and trying to reduce the reliance on that propulsion engine or battery, so you’d use this in an auxiliary format and therefore you’re not then taking power from the propulsion range”
Auxiliary power for EVs is a potential issue when vans need power for tools or conversions such as controlled temperature bodywork. Fischer Panda offered one solution at the recent CV Show, reducing the demand on the vehicle’s traction battery by using an additional battery pack, as the company’s Chris Fower explained.
“When you go to the EV, it’s all about range anxiety and trying to reduce the reliance on that propulsion engine or battery. So you’d use this in an auxiliary format and therefore you’re not then taking power from the propulsion range, you’re using an independent battery source, so that’s the concept as we see it in the commercial vehicle space.
“Here is the additional lithium battery, launched at the CV show this year. This product delivers additional capacity, so your 2.0kWh battery can now become a 5.5kWh solution. That’s a 3.5kWh battery coupled together with a 2.0kWh. So if you want to scale it, you can then scale your battery solution up the more batteries you add.
“You can just scale up depending on how much range you’re going to need. For most of the applications that we are involved with, 3.0 kW is enough. That’s pretty much mains connection there off a three-pin socket from a charging solution. 3.0 kW is continuous whereas it’s got a peak of 5.0 kW, so if you put a high start current on the unit it can cope with that overload. So 3.0 kW in most of the applications that we are involved with is more than enough power to run tooling or different types of machinery or comms equipment.
“A big advocate of the product is BT Openreach and Network Rail. You’ve got fleet vehicles that are running tooling, charging up tools that are electrically powered, right up to drainage inspection vehicles.
“In a fleet application this is transferable now, because it’s portable and if the vehicle lease is, say, up in two or three years, you can take it off the vehicle and put it on the next vehicles so then it’s got a better return on investment as well.
Philip Clarke has taken this concept a stage further. He set up Tual around two years ago to deal with EV range and on-board power issues. The company has produced batteries that can be deployed in electric vans.
Tual offers two versions. “One is swappable so it can go in and out and the other one is fixed,” explained Clarke at the recent CV Show. “The first use case is all about overnight charge. For example, if you’re a DPD driver, and you’re driving home but don’t have the ability to charge at home.
“You don’t want to spend an hour or two searching for a place to charge so, in that case, you can collect a fully charged power bank from a DPD depot. The power bank is vectored in in 90 seconds and you just drive home. Then, wherever you park, your vehicle charges while you sleep, just like it does if you can plug in at home. Our installation kit has an internal CCS charging loom that goes into a splitter box underneath. So the van, as far as it’s concerned, is being charged by CCS in the normal protocol way. So that’s the first use case, overnight charging and you can take the power bank home, charge the vehicle up to 100% and drop off your empty power bank in the morning – and you’ve spent no time charging because you’re asleep.”
“We then have the RAC and it said its van stops four or five times during the day and every time it stops, the power bank could push juice to its traction battery and over a day that would allow its vans to run double the range and the driver doesn’t have to do anything. Fleets can set the rules but most people set it so that it starts charging whenever the driver turns off the ignition, so a courier, such as DHL or DPD, can set this so that every time the driver jumps out with a parcel, a little bit of juice is pushed into the battery. Or it could be British Gas and every time you go to somebody’s premises to fix a boiler, it pushes juice. So that’s the second use case – range extension.”
The final case is similar to the Fischer Panda use, offering power to charge tools or run other equipment. “People started saying, ‘Well that’s cool, but I need off-grid power regardless of the vehicle and ‘Maybe a fleet will have a welfare van that gives enough power to get there and back, but hasn’t got enough power to run when it’s onsite,’” Clarke explains.
“People say, ‘I usually use a generator, can I use this instead of a generator?’, or, as could be the case with the RAC, what we’re showing today is a standalone recovery charger so if a driver has a Tesla that’s run out of battery, the RAC they can turn up and squirt some power in very quickly. So those three use cases – recharging, range extension and portable power – that’s really what we’re building out.”
