History of EVs at GMIT

In November 2017, I became the first member of staff to own and drive an EV as a daily car. However, the first EV experience at GMIT dates back to 2012, when a pilot project was lead by Dr. Thomas Roche.

Below you will find a short summary and findings of this trial.

Electric Vehicle Trial GMIT

Project Date:     2012

Leader: Dr. Thomas Roche

Title:  An investigation in to the use of the Electric Vehicle as a change agent to address climate change.

Aim:  To validate the use of electric vehicles as a viable alternative to the internal combustion engine from the perspective of efficiency and cost as well as the driver experience for a range of different user groups.

Objectives:

1. To characterise the performance of an electric vehicle under different driving conditions.
2. To test the efficiency of the vehicle for comparison with traditional diesel and petrol cars.
3. To investigate the driver experience in driving an electric car for different user groups.
4. To support school visits and other events to inform young people on the benefits of Electric Vehicles as a solution to address climate change issues.
5. To promote the use of electric vehicles for specific user groups.

Project Description:

An Electric Car was provided to GMIT by the ESB as part of their program to measure customer experience as well as to promote the use of electric vehicles across the country.

The car provided by the ESB was Mitsubishi I Miev shown in Image 1. The vehicle was a 4 door, 4-seater city car with a theoretical range of 70 kilometres.

As part of the project the vehicle was fitted with a GPS tracking device that tracked location as well acceleration and speed. This data could be observed live on a website specially setup for the vehicle. A charging station was installed in the Institute to charge the car daily. The Institute fitted a data logger to the charge point to measure the amount of energy the vehicle used dally.

This instrumentation allowed the speed, acceleration and distance to be measured and plotted against the electric energy consumed daily.

An experiment was setup to characterise the performance of the vehicle under different driving conditions. A random (user profile) sample was required for the experiment.  It was decided to give individual staff an opportunity to use the vehicle for a period that would represent their daily use.  Some of the users were from 20 km from the Institute travelling through country roads, other operated only in an sub/urban environment. Data was selected from 70 users operating under different driving conditions.  The efficiency of the vehicle could be calculated and correlated with the driving style of the user as well as driving conditions. Each of the users were interviewed after their use of the vehicle to gain an understanding of their experience.

Image 1. Mitsubishi eCar presented  to Students at the Enda’s Secondary school In Galway Ireland 

Image 2. ESB eCar presented to Scoil Iognoid secondary School in Galway

Outcomes

1. The energy consumption of the vehicle was consistent and was independent of driving style. This is most likely because of torque management system in the vehicle. The efficiency of vehicle calculated as one tenth of a diesel equivalent, approx. 1c per kilometre.
2. The energy consumption of the vehicle was independent urban/suburban and country driving. The use of air-conditioning had a high impact on vehicle range. This was determined only from the user interviews. There was no data acquired on the actual % reduction of range as a result of using air conditioning. There was anecdotal evidence from the interviews that the range was heavily affected by the number of occupants in the vehicle.
3. Without exception all participants enjoyed the experience of using the vehicle but when pressed communicated that they would not buy an electric vehicle. The primary reason for this was the high purchase price. In addition, all users experienced ‘range anxiety’. In all cases the vehicle did not provide a range of 70km and indeed it was hard to predict range using the display in the vehicle. They also felt that the technology was not developed enough and that they would wait for the technology to develop further.
4. The vehicle was used to visit 16 post primary schools in the city and county and there was a lot of interest in the vehicle. The vehicle was also on the internal stand of the Science Festival in Galway where it grabbed huge attention. Images of the school visits are presented in Image 1 and 2 above.

A video of the Electric Vehicle project at GMIT can be seen here

https://www.gmit.ie/gmit-ecar