Improvement of crash behavior in a light urban electric vehicle

Urban-EV applies innovative manufacturing technologies and materials to produce a 2-seat urban electric vehicle with enhanced range: 150km. Attending to weight and power targets, the vehicle is classified as L7e, heavy quadricycle. The aim of the project is to design and test urban electric vehicles with crash behavior similar to conventional vehicles. The crash configurations considered for the design include both the ones in the Regulation and also the ones done by Euro NCAP. For achieving this target new materials and processes and also innovative joining processes have been optimized. The result is a very light multi-material structure that includes innovative solutions for energy absorption based on the use of low cost structural thermoplastic components. The paper includes the description of the structure optimization process and also of the restrain system that presents specific characteristics to be adapted to this kind of vehicles