Electric drive vehicle deployment in the UK

The UK stands ready to examine the electrification of road transport. Following a growth in UK petrolelectric vehicles, and strong policy signals supporting decarbonised road transport through electrification, Cenex the UK’s first Centre of excellence for low carbon and fuel cell technologies, has examined the deployment of electric drive vehicles in conjunction with the University of Sheffield. This paper presents analysis of an electric vehicle deployment focusing on the smart ed, including laboratory and in use road and user perception analysis. The study found consistent range performance across laboratory drive cycles, but differing real world performance, where range and duty alter significantly. The high impact of ‘hotel’ loads is shown and equivalent CO2 emissions and fuel costs are calculated, showing that good environmental and cost performance is linked to high rates of utilisation. The user perception study highlights strong and weak areas of the vehicle performance compared to a conventional vehicle, and finally limited data from the Mitsubishi i MiEV is included as a comparator vehicle where equivalent CO2 emissions and fuel costs were found to be below conventionally powered vehicles.