Abstract
As the title suggests, the sustainability of personal electric vehicles is in question. In terms of life span, range, comfort, and safety, electric vehicles, such as e-cars and e-buses, are much better than personal electric vehicles, such as e-bikes. However, electric vehicles present greater costs and increased energy consumption. Also, the impact on environment, health, and fitness is more negative than that of personal electric vehicles. Since transportation vehicles can benefit from hybrid electric storage solutions, we address the following question: Is it possible to reach a compromise between sustainability and technology constraints by implementing a low-cost hybrid personal electric vehicle with improved life span and range that is also green? Our methodology consists of life cycle assessment and performance analyses tackling the facets of the sustainability challenges (economy, society, and environment) and limitations of the electric storage solutions (dependent on technology and application) presented herein. The hybrid electric storage system of the proposed hybrid e-bike is made of batteries, supercapacitors, and corresponding power electronics, allowing the optimal control of power flows between the system’s components and application’s actuators. Our hybrid e-bike costs less than a normal e-bike (half or less), does not depend on battery operation for short periods of time (a few seconds), has better autonomy than most personal electric vehicles (more than 60 km), has a greater life span (a few years more than a normal e-bike), has better energy efficiency (more than 90%), and is much cleaner due to the reduced number of batteries replaced per life time (one instead of two or three).
Highlights
In the context of the recent expansion of urban transportation systems, followed by rapid development of road infrastructure and motorization, the increase in the number of vehicles is completely justified [1,2]
Other types of storage—pumped hydroelectric storage (PHS), compressed air energy storage (CAES), flywheels, capacitors, sodium-sulfur (NaS) batteries, vanadium redox (VRB), zinc-bromine (ZnBr) and polysulfide bromine (PSB) flow batteries, superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES), solar fuel, thermal energy storage (TES), and liquid air storage are analyzed in reference [34]
It is important to mention that life cycle assessment (LCA) tackles the environmental and health impacts and the energy consumption aspects, but it tells nothing about the dynamic performance, especially its sensitivity at wrong charging/discharging cycles or the combination of more negative factors
Summary
In the context of the recent expansion of urban transportation systems, followed by rapid development of road infrastructure and motorization, the increase in the number of vehicles is completely justified [1,2]. Many studies have tried to cover a least a part of these facets, such as dynamic performance (speed, power, range and acceleration, according to local regulations, see Table 1) [17,21,31], energy consumption analysis (stored vs used energy, autonomy, charging time, storage characteristics, see Tables 2 and 3) [21,25,26,33], functional performance (energy efficiency, temperature domain and other environmental parameters, route optimization, and minimizing daily accelerations and braking) [25,26], and sustainability (cyclability/durability that affects life span, state of charge characteristics) [29,34] Most of these facets area direct result of the constraints on the design of EVs [35]. SustainaAbilitEy u20r1o9,p1e2,axnFOstRuPdEyERaRnEaVlIyEzWed the economic and social impact of owning an e-bik eo,f i2n5 reference re[4p[n34oo]3,rA]iAtr,nienErcpEeiguoduprrfreootuoinrpnpettgeieslnaasfwngnuaeevsfslruttiuuenseaddglrvyeyssipnaaoagvonnfsriaan~tloelyg3yfdzs0z~e.0e3odd0f€0t~thph€3eee0per0eecyrco€oenypnaoeroaem,rrm,aicyanicenaaanaarcdnc,cdcseaeopnspcottiaaaaccnnilacccilemeepirmprtaaaatpcneteatcocoeoftff7rooa07fw%t0oen%,woian,nfngaid7nna0gadn%saea,an-fabseeniak-odfbepei,aekoirnesap,atreiifeonrefnaerotresiepoifnneenccrreeeasntiincoecne[4sn3ion],ce inncoidinecnidtsenwtserweerreeproeprtoerdte.d
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