Engineers from the National University of the Center of the Province of Buenos Aires (Unicen) have developed an electric vehicle for urban use that runs on lithium batteries and can be charged using domestic electricity and solar panels. All electrical components, with the exception of the batteries, which are of Chinese origin, were conceived, designed and manufactured at the Faculty of Engineering. Two people fit in the car and, unlike the traditional ones, it has three wheels. Although the device is already in operation, some details are still missing to finalize it.
The objective of the scientists is that this prototype can reach a series manufacturing process and thus stop the use of fossil fuels for other energies that are sustainable, reduce pollution and contribute to the construction of the necessary infrastructure for when traditional vehicles are no longer manufactured.
“The end is the transfer to a company that wants to make these vehicles. We want the car to be salable and have good value on the road. In addition to the fact that for the University this development means showing technology and installed capacities, we demonstrate that electromobility is possible and is a local development in Argentina“, account Marcelo Spinaengineer at the Unicen Olavarría School of Engineering (FIO) and director of the Impulsa project on energy and sustainable mobility.
The vehicle has two types of battery charging, a system for home use to connect it to 220 volts in any house with all the protections, and a sunroof which allows a small recovery of energy with the car on or off. Both battery and panel management are carried out in Olavarría.
Unlike the three options available on the market and similar to the prototype developed by FIO, this two-seater has two load options and has three wheels. Yes well the solar panels that were designed at the Faculty They are not enough to fill the vehicle’s battery, as they must be larger than conventional cars, allow a partial recharge.
at the forefront
To install the solar panels on the car and prepare all the electrical part, the researchers closely studied and followed different developments. Thus, they became one of the first university laboratories in the country linked to electromobility. In 2022, they became the first public school in the country to install a publicly accessible electric vehicle charging point on site..
“Not only can any electric car enter, but it’s totally free. Plus, it’s solar powered so you can charge your unit knowing the power source is squeaky clean.“, underlined Nicholas Brizzioelectromechanical engineer from Unicen and head of the College’s Electromobility Laboratory.
This development earned him the link with the Argentine Association of Electric Vehicles and In January 2023, they received a visit from a Tesla electric car which traveled across the continent from Alaska to Ushuaia and passed by the Faculty of Engineering facilities to recharge it and continue on its way.
In fact, says Brizzio, at the Laboratory they develop a management system that allows optimizing the performance of the batteries and is “very similar” to the one used by Tesla. “We do everything, both the hardware and software of the car. Once we have it, we take it out into the street and put it to the test.“, highlights.
a nice structure
To validate the circulation of a car on the street, there is the Model configuration license, a procedure that consists of a test where it is put to the test and it is checked if it brakes, if it has seat belts, if it has lights and if the intensity is adequate, among other requirements. However, describes the director of the Laboratory, electric cars lack their own standard.
“We were given a very nice challenge and we started working with the National Institute of Industrial Technology. Then we wrote the manual of good engineering practices for making electric vehiclesconverted or manufactured in national industries”, emphasizes Brizzio.
In this sense, the engineer says that the technical part can be resolved and that the Faculty is in good condition. However, for electromobility to penetrate the Argentine automotive fleet, the legal part must be considered first. “We were pioneers in the country and became one of the first nations to think about how to validate this class of vehicles.”.
First doesn’t always win
The three-wheel, two-seater vehicle is not a new idea, but it appears within the framework of a story linked to electric mobility that was born in 2010 when Marcelo Spina received an email to participate in the Atacama Solar Challenge, an electric car race with lithium batteries recharged with solar panels. In this way, the Faculty accepted the challenge and the following year took the solar vehicle called Pampa Solar I to Chile to compete in the desert.
This event aroused the interest of students and teachers. From there, many of the practical works of the disciplines were directed to Pampa Solar I. In 2012 the race was repeated and the University participated with a completely improved car that included among its novelties a battery management system called BMS (Battery management system) to maximize vehicle power and optimize performance.
“In this context, we were able to demonstrate that the encapsulation of the solar panel cells was more efficient than the commercial cells available on the market, and we created our own”, recalls Spina. One of the outstanding points of the race, which started in Santiago de Chile and ended in Arica, on the border with Peru, is that the winner was not the one who arrived first, but the one who consumed less energy. On that occasion, the Unicen team won the prize for the best use of solar resources in Latin America for creating its own panels and for the best use of lithium for the development of the BMS.
In the last years, Brizzio participated as supervisor and attorney in electric car races held in the United States, Europe and Africa. In one of the competitions, the researcher observed a car that called his attention. “On the outside it was a spacecraft and when I asked the cost they told me one and a half million euros. However, the electrical part was the same as ours”, recalls the researcher.
Both engineers agree that local electronics development is on par with the best teams in the world: “We are in a position to produce vehicles with a much smaller budget, but technologically equal”, they emphasize.