bat2share

E-bikes are an impor­tant building block for the (inner-city) mobility of the future. However, they are more expen­sive and less envi­ron­men­tally friendly than a conven­tional bicycle, consid­ering the emis­sions required to produce the battery needed and the carbon foot­print for energy consump­tion during the ride, the latter depending on the elec­tricity mix used. In prac­tice, battery life limits the usage time of the complete vehicle. The recy­cling of used batteries from elec­tric vehi­cles is a general problem that is rapidly gaining in rele­vance.

One promising approach to promote e-bikes for commuter traffic is battery sharing, i.e. battery-as-a-service (BaaS). The bat2share project inves­ti­gates to what extent controlled charging processes, optimal storage and cycling can maxi­mize battery usage inten­sity, extend its life­time and reduce the number of e-bike batteries in circu­la­tion.

Within the frame­work of indus­trial re­search, the aim of this project is to inves­ti­gate and develop the compo­nents of such an e-bike battery sharing system and to bring them together in the form of a labo­ra­tory demon­strator. This includes

• an intel­li­gent battery manage­ment system (BMS) with state of health (SoH) moni­toring, inte­grated in the e-bike battery, the power elec­tronics, control algo­rithm and energy manage­ment concept to charge and monitor a large number of batteries simul­ta­ne­ously in an energy-effi­cient way, thermal condi­tioning, access system for user iden­ti­fi­ca­tion,
• the soft­ware frame­work for oper­a­tors, users and auto­mated battery health manage­ment, i.e. user and battery data acqui­si­tion and process­ing,
• the devel­op­ment of a gami­fi­ca­tion and incen­tive scheme for user moti­va­tion and aware­ness gener­a­tion for carbon foot­print and the economic good "battery",
• the inves­ti­ga­tion of scal­a­bility and applic­a­bility for commuter traffic, also with regard to grid-friendly charging.

The sharing & charging station is to be oper­ated self-suffi­ciently by means of photo­voltaics (PV). Second-life e-bike batteries from the same sharing system will serve as stationary storage. In contrast to existing rental vehi­cles and battery-sharing concepts, the system is based on an e-bike retrofit kit. Hence, poten­tially any conven­tional bicycle can be elec­tri­fied and powered by a shared battery. This elim­i­nates the need to provide addi­tional or special vehi­cles (like e-scooters) for sharing and also solves the "last mile" issue, as users can use their own bicycle as usual, even without batteries.

Research program

This re­search project is funded by the Zero Emis­sion Mobility program of the Climate- and Energy funds owned by the Republic of Austria, oper­ated by the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Envi­ron­ment, Energy, Mobility, Inno­va­tion and Tech­nology.