Connected, autonomous, shared, and electric vehicle (CASE-V) technology is set to play a major role in the exciting transport revolution happening today, helping to improve and level up transport across the world by making every day journeys greener, safer, more flexible and more reliable.
Environmental issues especially CO2 footage are major concerns for the automobile industry. As an emerging trend, vehicle electrification aims to investigate alternative powertrain technologies and offer potentially fuel-efficient solutions in propulsion systems, traffic strategies and urban studies. Hybrid is a good transition technology to reduce environmental pollution that makes it possible to both improve energy efficiency and reduce exhaust emissions of vehicles.
Vehicle electrification is offering a platform for new propulsion systems to work at higher energy efficiency and making the vehicle a mobile leisure or office place as well as an A2B moving carrier, while “new energy” technology demand including for hydrogen and zero carbon fuels is to seek breakthrough. For hybrid and electric vehicles, developing optimal energy management strategies is critical to achieving the best performance and energy efficiency through power-split and propulsion system control.
Rapid development in informatics enables optimization of hybrid and electric vehicle systems with a fusion of external dynamics, e.g., driver and traffic. This VE Research Centre commits to promoting a paradigm shift to more sustainable mobility. It has registered fixed assets worth 2.2 million pounds and has 12 independent testing cells equipped with industrial-grade test system equipment such as ETAS, AVL, NI, SIERRA and Pi Innovo.
The Research Centre has long been cooperating with the world's top industrial partners such as Jaguar Land Rover, Ford, and Shell. The lab can perform engine calibration, fuel component testing, rapid control prototyping, hardware in the loop testing, open-source controller development, and R&D and testing of tire dynamics testing. The Research Centre undertakes longitudinal research fund projects from the UK, EU and China, such as EPSRC, Innovate UK, Horizon 2020, China Natural Science Foundation, etc., and the total longitudinal research funding exceeds £11,000,000.