Electric Vehicles

According to a forecast by International Energy Agency, the use of Electric Vehicles will grow from 3 million to 125 million by the year 2030. That is almost 41 times of what it is today, with the increasing demand of fossil fuel and problems with pollution it seems most likely to happen. Owing to that, all major IC Engine Car manufacturers like Ford and GM are slowly turning their attention towards the Electric Vehicles. The market and consumers are in need for a cheaper personal transportation and even on top of that, the government has started supporting Electric Vehicles through its policies. Considering all these facts it is pretty much evident that very soon we will find Electric Cars zooming all around our Roads. Or should I also include the Space, where there is already one Tesla car traveling beyond Mars as I write this article.
This change has already begun to show symptoms. In the past few years there have emerged many successful Electric Vehicle manufactures like Tesla, Kia Soul, Navistar and Kandi to name a few. And because of them there have also been many technology breakthroughs in the area of batteries and motors of an Electric Vehicle. While the changes are underway, it is time for us as engineers to understand what’s under the hood of an Electric car and how they work. So in this article let’s break down an Electric Vehicle to its bones and flesh to learn about them.
Important Note: Before we dive in I would like to mention that the term Electric Vehicle is a vast ground. Any locomotive that does not have a fuel tank is referred to as an Electric Vehicle. But in this article by Electric vehicle or EV in short, I am referring only to Electric cars, bus and trucks. Unless otherwise specified special EVs like segway, Airborne or waterborne EV’s are not within the scope of this article.

What makes an Electric Car?

An Electric Car is an automobile by itself and consists of many components and a large cluster of wires connecting them all. But there are few basic bare minimum materials for an Electric Car which is shown in the block diagram below.
The Engine of a conventional IC Engine Car is replaced by an electrical Motor and the fuel tank is replaced by the Battery Pack. Of all the components only the Battery Pack and Motor alone contributes to about more than 50% of the total cars weight and the price. As you can see the Battery Pack, Battery Management System (BMS) Controller, Motor and the Transmission unit forms the major components in an EV. 

Vital Parts of an Electric Car

The Battery Pack is the fuel source of the car, since there are hundreds of cells arranged to form a battery pack a special circuit is required to monitor these cells, this circuit is called as the Battery Monitoring circuit. The DC voltage from battery cannot be used to drive a motor so we need the controller which drives the motor, and the Transmission system transfers the rotational energy from motor on to the wheels through some gear arrangements. Let’s look into each Part in details to understand more on EV’s.

EV Batteries