The first driving prototype of DELIVER, an electric delivery vehicle cofunded by the European Commissions’ 7th Framework Programme had its world premiere at FISITA World Automotive Congress (June 2nd-June 6st in Maastricht – Holland).
The DELIVER project started in November 2011 with the goal to reduce the environmental impact in urban areas by 40% and thus design and construct an electric light commercial vehicle which perfectly combines the needs of inner city traffic with the advantages of electric vehicles.
The result is a light weight commercial vehicle of 2,200kg GVW and a payload of 700 kg, with a host of innovative features for the delivery driver and 18% additional transport capacity when compared with today’s vans of a similar wheelbase. The concept deploys the latest electric vehicle technologies with its fully electric drivetrain featuring in-wheel motors with 2
speed transmissions and 80 prismatic Li-NMC cells in its battery pack to increase energy efficiency and driving range. The vehicle perfectly meets the demands of today’s busy delivery drivers.
Thanks to its flexible ergonomic cabin concept and removal of the B pillar on the kerb side, there is a decrease in both workload and the duration of the delivery process itself. The ability for the driver to easily exit the vehicle on the kerb side not only minimises extra walking distances around the vehicle, but improves driver safety. The “Walk in door” concept reduces potential obstacles caused by the door sills. With a minimum range of 100 km and a maximum speed of 100 km/h, DELIVER represents an attractive proposition for light commercial vehicles with an urban and intra urban field of application such as postal, parcel, supermarket and city council land utility deliveries.
After executing a broad conceptual design study which started by establishing initial design specifications and continued right through to the detailed virtual performance assessment of the final fully electric vehicle concept, a driving demonstrator concept vehicle was built by Liberty Electric Cars to demonstrate as many of the new vehicle innovations as possible. An extended testing phase on the test tracks at the Aldenhoven Testing Center, RWTH Aachen University’s new testing ground, enabled the project partners to analyse performance indicators such as energy efficiency, dynamic & static structural performance, active & passive safety, ergonomics or range.
The project, which is cofunded by the European Commission as part of the European Green Vehicles Initiative, is coordinated by Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika) of RWTH Aachen University and gathers ten partners from across Europe, including major OEMs, research partners and cities’ representatives. Besides ika (DE), the consortium comprises Centro Ricerche Fiat (IT), Volkswagen Group Research (DE), Liberty Electric Cars (UK), Michelin Recherche et Technique (CH), Polis Network (BE), SP- Technical Research Institute of Sweden (SE), HPL Prototypes (UK) as well as CADEM (TR) and Mobit (TR).
