Optibody Project has a budget of approximately 3 million euros, to be allocated to the investigation of a new concept of modular structural architecture for electric vans and trucks and will seek an improvement in passive safety of these vehicles. This project is coordinated by Juan José Alba, a member of Vehi-Road Engineering Research Institute of Aragon of the University of Zaragoza.

In a future scenario, where structures of electric cars will new open spaces, the project Optibody consider its use to improve passive safety, focusing on vans and light trucks, but later can be applied to other vehicles.

Within 10 to 15 years, the International Energy Agency provides a significant presence of electric vehicles in the global car fleet, so they are developing new technologies that try to improve different aspects such as efficiency, and security structure , and so in the future to present competitive vehicles that may hit the market.

His weak point is the autonomy

One of the advantages that the project will have Optibody is the experience of its industrial partners to manufacture cars that will establish in advance which advances research results are suitable for mass production of vehicles, which will ahead of other countries competing for such technologies as the United States and Japan.

In addition, a modular architecture allows the possibility of improving efficiency, which can then be optimized in terms of cost, greater design freedom, and integration with other technologies such as fuel cells, hybrid vehicles and the use of batteries, This opens the range of applications and gives a promising future. Thus, this new concept represents a market opportunity not only for major vehicle manufacturers but also for companies and SMEs charged with manufacture of different components.

Currently the use of such vehicles is limited to urban areas because they are very light and optimize energy consumption, but their autonomy is still a major problem. They are used as functional utility vehicles and providing cleaning services, refuse collection, etc.

In this regard, note that although in recent years also has reduced the accident rate in urban areas, the number of accidents causing casualties and damage to vehicles and street furniture is remarkably high. It is therefore necessary to investigate the passive safety of these vehicles, which in future will have a significant presence on our streets and interact with pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, road users weaker when an incident occurs.

Source: I3A