Modelling and testing of long range battery electric vehicle performance

There are two significant issues facing road transport in the medium to long term: the depletion of cheap oil reserves and the need to reduce carbon emissions. A long term solution for passenger cars could be the introduction of battery electric vehicles (BEVs). However, one of the main problems associated with the current generation of BEVs is their short range relative to conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars.To investigate this issue, a long range battery electric vehicle, the UltraCommuter (UC), was constructed by the University of Waikato in partnership with HybridAuto Ltd. This paper describes the development, modelling and testing of the UC and its performance in the 2007 World Solar Challenge.