Thisproject served as a base for my Bachelor’s thesis at UIAH and it addressesfuture of electric cars and infrastructure needed to support them. Maindevelopment criteria of this project were: (1) reducing number of privateautomobiles by means of integrating private driving to public transportation,(2) providing alternative solution for solving problems related to rechargingtime, range and comfort of electric vehicles, (3) utilization of existingnetworks and infrastructures.


http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/74697/20101022/eel-assist-vladimir-abramov-electric-cars.htm
http://www.slashgear.com/el-assist-concept-lets-you-charge-your-electric-car-while-you-drive-18108555/
http://www.ecofriend.org/entry/el-assist-recharging-concept-lets-electric-vehicles-recharge-on-the-move/
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/el-assist

First partof my concept introduces a support vehicle for electric cars. This vehiclewould use existing technology and overhead network used by trolleybuses ortrams. When travelling long distances e.g. between two cities, electric carscould connect to the support vehicle on the “connection station” to rechargetheir batteries on the move. Support vehicles would serve as “docking stations”both for private and public EVs. As a follow up, this concept includes idea ofintegration of private and public transports by introducing a shared travelservice. Basic idea is that private electric car owners who are using thisservice would take passengers in exchange for electricity provided by the network.In the long-run application this arrangement is aimed on creating incentivesfor people to take passengers along their travelling route and thus increasing“passenger per car” ratio. This could lead to reduction of private cars and atthe same time to better and more flexible public transportation.

Second partof the concept introduces auto-piloted support shuttles, which would be used torecharge batteries when travelling longer distances. This solution is proposedas an alternative for installing bigger and heavier batteries into EVs. Inaddition, recharging electric vehicles is only one role of the support shuttleconcept. Other roles include improving safety by controlling such factors asspeed and proximity to other vehicles/objects and relieving the driver from monotonousand frustrating driving at long distances.

Main stressis put on developing solutions for long range travelled by electric vehicles. Mostof the current approaches developed by various companies and organizationsinvolve changing batteries, fast recharging and wireless power transfer (e.g.via induction, IPT). Although these approaches have their own pros and have receivedwide acceptance from some car manufactures and governments, there are someessential problems such as requirement for vast amount of additional powerplants (Fast recharging, Level 3), overwhelming amount of supplementary carbatteries which would put more pressure on recycling facilities (Batterychanging stations, e.g. Project Better Place) and poor energy transfer ratio (incase of IPT).