Extended lifetime of road Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) (2ZERO Partnership)

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following outcomes:

• Holistic improved understanding of ageing and degradation of critical electric drive components relevant from a system integration point of view (fitting, mounts, connectors, sealings…) of Light Duty (vehicle category M1 and N1) BEV enabling user-centric designs for longer life and for higher residual values to minimise the environmental impact and to strengthen European resource sovereignty;
• 20 % higher residual value^[1] through longer lifetime of BEV increasing material efficiency and productivity in comparison to baseline, state of the art vehicle;
• Future sustainable, economy-design concept evaluation for extended lifetime with minimum use of resources and re-use, recycle and End of Life (EoL) strategies applicable for advanced technology development;
• Advanced prospective/prescriptive maintenance and repair concepts to extend useful lifetime of BEV and minimise the used resources (20% reduction in resources in the use phase) and environmental footprint (5% reduction).

Currently, the value of a vehicle is mostly defined by driven mileage and age, underestimating the actual residual value. However, the real actual residual value of a BEV and its component should help implement Circular Economies (CE) strategies beyond classical shredding, such as reuse, remanufacturing, recovery of precious material. The residual value is determined by ageing and degradation in the use phase, repair and maintenance measures, operation of the vehicle and also by a CE-specific design. Consequently, prospective/prescriptive maintenance strategies, repairability and upgradability of vehicles must be addressed in relation to actual ageing and degradation of a component as part of upcoming CE strategies (including 9R approaches) to ensure longer (in terms of higher residual values) and more sustainable lifetimes of road BEV without over-sizing components and/or increasing the use of raw materials.

This topic focuses on the road BEV electric drive components relevant from a system integration point of view where high combined operational loads are to be expected, on the thermal management systems as well as on power electronics. The ageing and degradation of pack and module level is included whereas the battery cell level is excluded.

Proposals are expected to address all the following aspects:

• Analyse holistically the ageing and degradation of relevant, critical BEV functions and relevant sub-systems (excluding battery cells), that determine the Vehicle Lifetime and residual value under the aspect of functionality, safety and economic considerations (e.g., through correlating real-life operational loads with observed degradation and ageing effects);
• Develop tools and methods to assess, measure and predict ageing and degradation of relevant sub-systems (e.g. modelling combining multi-physical models describing ageing/degradations and vehicle operation and applying AI approaches, non-invasive evaluation to describe ageing and degradation over lifetime, multi-physical testing to accelerated occurrence of realistic ageing and degradation phenomena, use of novel sensors for measuring ageing and degradation in an electric drivetrain, etc.);
• Develop extended lifetime concepts and assess lifetime extension measures for BEV ensuring high residual values including right-sized design, operation, maintenance, refurbish and repair, by e.g. definition of prospective maintenance strategies, implementing ageing / degradation models into the design, advanced control strategies to minimise operational loads contributing to ageing and degradation phenomena including sensor technologies to obtain real-life operational data;
• For all relevant, critical components, follow the “digital product passport” approach, to achieve maximum traceability^[2];
• Data management for operational loads, maintenance, and repair measures;
• Validation and demonstration of concepts and designs for higher residual values (less aging and degradation under operational conditions) appropriate to the TRL level via a full physical demonstrator of all components of the electric drive-in representative laboratory environment.

The project(s) should take account Open Science, its practices and learning, and the project’s results will be enacted in line with FAIR principles for data^[3].

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on ‘Towards zero emission road transport’ (2ZERO). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on the results to the European Partnership ‘Towards zero emission road transport’ (2ZERO) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.

[1] Reference UBA Study on “Illegal Treatment of End-of-Life Vehicles -Assessment of the environmental, micro- and macroeconomic effects”, https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/publikationen/illegal-treatment-of-end-of-life-vehicles, last visited 20.06.2024; the current additional revenue of an BEV (not considering materials and parts which are common with ICE) w/o the battery is estimated to be 120 € neglecting economic effects such as COVID. Correcting this one can assume that the electric drive train currently has a low residual value of » 250 € and the battery estimated to 2.000 €.

[2] The “Digital Product Passport” will provide information about products’ environmental sustainability. This information will be easily accessible by scanning a data carrier and it will include attributes such as the durability and reparability, the recycled content or the availability of spare parts of a product. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_6257

[3] Final Report and Action Plan from the European Commission Expert Group on FAIR Data, “TURNING FAIR INTO REALITY” - https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/7769a148-f1f6-11e8-9982-01aa75ed71a1/language-en