State-of-the Art Electrical Machines for Modern Electric Vehicles

The concept of electric vehicles (EVs) is nothing new, it was when the internal combustion engine (ICE) first introduced in the middle of the previous century the electric vehicle (EV) first conceived and since then EVs remained in existence along with the ICEs for several years. And although gasoline has by far more energy density than electrochemical battery can produce, EVs continued to exist, especially in urban areas because of its self-starting capability. Early this century the electric starter for ICE’s produced and since it has being energy efficient and nonpolluting in that sense, the EVs lost its chances completely to the ICEs due to its limited range and inferior performance. And since then, the interests focused in ICEs and in how to improve their designs and how to make them even more and more efficient and ICEs earned its own respect over the world then. Although, the EVs interest never perished completely and the interests have been drown straight to EVs whenever ICEs had problems arising regarding their operation .The EV’s came back to a strong interest after The air quality concerns in the early 1960’s and the energy crisis in the 1970’s, even stronger after the latest environmental awareness and energy concerns have imposed which also led to a serious threat to the use of ICE automobiles because they are found to be the source of urban pollution According to figures released by the U.S. And after years of interests and researches in electric vehicles, the development of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) had been discouraging and that was due to a perception that it was an interim solution before the full implementation of zero emission EVs. HEVs have recently been very popular due to the fact that they take the uniqueness of ultralow emissions, high fuel economy, affordable price and similar driving requirement and performance. The Toyota Prius was the first to implement this technology in 1997. Subsequently, the development of HEVs has been more encouraging especially after realizing the impact of these vehicles to the environment, which led to a more interest into making more of these vehicles. Even more types of EVs have been introduced since then and they are the plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and fuel cell EVs (FCEVs). When it comes to the comparisons between EVs and ICEV it can be seen that the prime mover is an electric motor in EVs while it’s an internal combustion engine in the ICEVs, ICEVs are powered by either Petrol or Diesel while EVs are powered by a charged battery or a ultra-capacitor, power transmission can be mechanical in both but as well as electrical in EVs, Higher efficiency can be produced by EVs, when it comes to the environmentally friendly EVs dominate, EVs uses a regenerative braking rather than a friction braking as in ICEVs , EVs are more expensive than ICEVs and the running cost is very low in EVs when compared to the running cost of ICEVs.