Let’s face it, no one likes waiting too long, even if it’s at a rapid charger while your electric car juices up. WAE Technologies’ latest battery intelligence software could solve that.
Elysia from WAE (formerly Williams Advanced Engineering), which was the technical offshoot of Formula 1 team Williams, is the most recent attempt by the British company to help electric car drivers reduce charging times and cut queues at motorway services by using the software.
It “draws on WAE’s unrivalled experience in high-performance batteries, gleaned from the sole supplier of batteries to ground-breaking electric motorsport series, as well as the design and development of batteries for road cars, electric hypercars and 1.4 MWh packs for 250-tonne mining trucks”, according to the company.
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Elysia estimates that a typical electric vehicle could rapidly charge 25 per cent faster if it was equipped from the factory with its intelligent software. That would mean reducing the time spent on a charger by 10 minutes, alleviating queues and resulting in much more efficient use of the rapid charging network.
As the British summer (or the lack of it) sets upon us and more and more people set out on holidays, these sorts of advancements are surely destined to come in handy for the average driver.
According to RAC, 12.6 million journeys are expected this weekend, with a significant number of which will be electric cars. EVs made up 17.9 per cent of new car sales in June, with last month showing a 40 per cent increase in volumes over this time last year, as per data from SMMT.
In times like this, charging demand is likely to exceed supply at points during holiday peaks, believes WAE. With Elysia Embedded, a state-of-the-art battery management algorithm, WAE says that these situations can be dealt with more efficiently.
Its suite of algorithms can safely unlock extra performance from an electric vehicle battery, bringing a host of benefits for plug-in car makers, which in turn can be passed on to consumers, such as faster charging.
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And to top it all off, Elysia has shown the ability to bring up to a 30 per cent increase in battery life, while also enabling dramatically reduced fast charge times and higher peak power output when compared to traditional battery management algorithms.
Commercial Lead for Elysia, Joe Jones said: “To protect the life of the battery, an electric car currently leaves the factory with a predetermined set of parameters that govern its performance, including how quickly it can be rapidly charged.
“Elysia offers car makers a much more sophisticated approach, unlocking improved performance safely and with no impact on battery life. Our intelligent charging algorithms allow the Battery Management System (BMS) to understand what conditions have the potential to damage the battery, and then using this information stay closer to the peak charging rate for longer, without ‘overstepping’ these limits.
“By reducing the time spent on a rapid charger by 10 mins for a typical electric vehicle, Elysia can increase the number of cars each charger can service in a day. The benefit here is twofold: happier electric car owners and more efficient utilisation of the existing rapid charging network.”
WAE’s Elysia came into the spotlight last month as well when we reported that shared EVs could reduce carbon footprint by 40 per cent.
Earlier, WAE had also set up a state-of-the-art facility in Oxfordshire to boost battery and electric powertrain production in the UK, creating 120 jobs.
