STEEL S4 EV is our last recently approved e-mobility project. Building from our experience in previous projects such as FP7 e-light “Advanced Structural Light-Weight Architectures for Electric Vehicles”, FP7 PLUSMOBY “Premium Low weight Urban Sustainable e-MOBilitY” or the soon to be finished FP7 Urban EV “Super Light Architectures for Safe and Affordable Urban Electric Vehicles”, STEEL S4 EV focuses on very competitive structural concepts made with high strength alloy steels. It is funded by the Research Fund for Coal and Steel (Grant Agreement-800726)
STEEL S4 EV aims at putting high strength steels at the forefront of a new trend in electric vehicles: light vehicles with three or four wheels that comply with crash regulation and with more restrictive Euro NCAP demands. Weld joint design and welding methodologies research to maintain the material properties in the weld area, assuring robustness and long term durability. Cost-effective low-investment manufacturing will be achieved by a modular and flexible structural design: a complex 3D skeleton frame of welded tubes, bent with high accuracy using programmed laser cuts will enable the production of different vehicles sharing the same tooling.
The STEEL S4 EV project was kicked off last September at CIDAUT premises. The Consortium is coordinated by CIDAUT, and includes INTERACTIVE FULLY ELECTRICAL VEHICLES (I-FEVS), the Belgian Welding Institute, the University of Lulea, Magnetto Automotive, and Thinkstep. 6 partners with two vehicle prototypes in mind and many different use cases. Soon our project website will be up and running!