Smart Forvision - The Future of the Electric Car

  • Nov 4, 2011
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Small car expert Smart tied up with BASF, the chemical company, to create the Forvision concept, unveiled at the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show, which gives us a glimpse into the future of the electric car

Smart Forvision

"If you had to invent the automobile all over again, given modern day knowhow, would you choose the internal combustion engine to power it?,” asks Dr Volker Warzelhan, Senior Vice President of Polymer Research Thermoplastics of BASF. A very poignant question to which there is only one answer – “No”. Internal combustion engines have a fairly low thermal efficiency and the primary reasons they came into popular use are economic ones.

But reliant on a fast depleting power source, those reasons will soon stop being enough. Clearly, the future is electric, and while many auto makers around the world struggle with the issue of carrying enough of this fuel source to provide practical driving ranges, Smart’s new Forvision concept shines some light on optimising the way in which electric cars are made to get the maximum out of current battery technology.

Smart Forvision




To create the technologies behind the Forvision, Smart, the pioneer in urban mobility, turned to BASF, the largest chemical company in the world and the global leader in automotive chemicals as well. Smart’s automotive expertise came together with BASF’s material and system proficiency to produce of an electric car that offers up to 20 per cent more driving range than any other comparable vehicle, without even touching the battery.



 
Smart Forvision

To help the Forvision achieve all it was set out to, it follows three guiding principles, the first of which is energy efficiency. In keeping with Smart’s tradition of having panoramic roofs in its city cars, the Forvision’s roof features a number of small hexagonal windows. Sandwiched between the layers of glass is a BASF-created recipe of organic photovoltaic cells and transparent organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). The OLEDs are transparent in the day when switched off, but flick a switch, and they light up, providing pleasant illumination inside the cabin at night. The organic photovoltaic cells, even in diffused light and poor lighting conditions, can generate enough electricity to run the car’s multimedia system and cooling fans, which brings us to the principal of heat management.

Smart Forvision
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Three cooling fans, one in the front and two inside the tail light pods are permanently run by the photovoltaic cells when the Forvision is parked in the sun to keep the cabin cool and airy. The lightweight, one-piece moulded plastic seats too contribute to keeping the occupants at a comfortable temperature at all times. BASF’s super-absorbent foam on the seat not only helps absorbs sweat on particularly hot days and keeps occupants cool, but it can dry itself in no time as well, ready for the next stint on the road. A special film from BASF, sandwiched inside the windshield, also blocks near infrared radiation to keep the car from heating up in the sun, but doesn’t interfere with radio frequencies such as mobile networks, GPS etc. And a pigment in the paint does a similar job for the rest of the body as well.

To battle colder climes, special thin fabrics with custom-tailored conductive coatings, called ‘e-textiles’, another BASF creation, can produce heat in specific areas when a current is passed through them. This system of heating works by heating only cold sensitive areas of the driver and passenger in contact with the seats and doors, so that copious amounts of energy isn’t wasted on heaters for the entire car. Then there are the high performance foams in the body panels, which provide the same heat insulation at a couple of centimetres thickness,  that takes regular insulation foam several more centimetres to manage, thereby saving weight as well.

Smart Forvision

Talking about weight saving, incidentally, that is the third guiding principle behind the Forvision. The most shining example of this in the concept is the use of the world’s first all-plastic wheel rims. Created by BASF with long glass fibres using a unique injection-moulding process, these plastic wheel rims, are half the weight of similarly sized steel rims and about 30 per cent less than aluminium alloy ones. Currently undergoing thorough testing, these wheels have passed many rigorous challenges, and might just be ready for series production in the near future.

Smart Forvision

While a lot of technologies on the Forvision are what you might say still in the prototype phase, the car itself is a shining beacon for electro-mobility. It proves that there is a lot to be achieved by re-evaluating the way cars have been traditionally made, if we are to embrace electricity as the automotive fuel of the future. Of course, next generation battery technology with improved storage and power output will still be the primary driver for the rise of the electric vehicle. But as BASF and Smart have proven, chemical solutions to engineering problems will play a big role as well.

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