More Like this

1. Shared electric scooters and electric bikes can reduce traffic in urban centres

   Asensio, Omar Isaac (November 2022, Nature energy)

   Dean, Nicky (Ed.)

   Evidence from a policy experiment shows that public safety bans on electric scooters and electric bikes can generate unintended traffic congestion in city centres. The studied ban is found to increase travel times by 9–11% for daily evening commutes and by 37% following stadium events. 

   more » « less
2. 4x4 Hybrid Electric Vehicle vs. Fully Electric Vehicle Mobility in Drastically Changing Terrain Conditions

   Jesse Paldan, Vladimir Vantsevich (July 2020, Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference of IFToMM Italy)

   null (Ed.)

   Active driveline technologies allow vehicles to dynamically control power distribution among driving wheels to improve vehicle operational parameters that impact terrain mobility. Two 4x4 electrified drivelines are compared which provide a variable power split: a hybrid electric vehicle with a controllable power transmitting unit and a fully electric vehicle (FEV) with individual electric wheel drives. The individual e-drives have the potential to improve mobility when the left and right wheel terrain conditions are drastically different. 

   more » « less
3. Electric fields drive bond homolysis

   https://doi.org/10.1039/D2SC06411A  

   Zhang, Boyuan; Schaack, Cedric; Prindle, Claudia R.; Vo, Ethan A.; Aziz, Miriam; Steigerwald, Michael L.; Berkelbach, Timothy C.; Nuckolls, Colin; Venkataraman, Latha (February 2023, Chemical Science)

   Electric fields have been used to control and direct chemical reactions in biochemistry and enzymatic catalysis, yet directly applying external electric fields to activate reactions in bulk solution and to characterize them ex situ remains a challenge. Here we utilize the scanning tunneling microscope-based break-junction technique to investigate the electric field driven homolytic cleavage of the radical initiator 4-(methylthio)benzoic peroxyanhydride at ambient temperatures in bulk solution, without the use of co-initiators or photochemical activators. Through time-dependent ex situ quantification by high performance liquid chromatography using a UV-vis detector, we find that the electric field catalyzes the reaction. Importantly, we demonstrate that the reaction rate in a field increases linearly with the solvent dielectric constant. Using density functional theory calculations, we show that the applied electric field decreases the dissociation energy of the O–O bond and stabilizes the product relative to the reactant due to their different dipole moments. 

   more » « less
4. GreenEVT: Greensboro Electric Vehicle Testbed

   https://doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2023.3343692  

   Nilsson, Gustav; Aquino, Alejandro_D Owen; Coogan, Samuel; Molzahn, Daniel K (March 2024, IEEE Systems Journal)

   The ongoing electrification of the transportation fleet will increase the load on the electric power grid. Since both the transportation network and the power grid already experience periods of significant stress, joint analyses of both infrastructures will most likely be necessary to ensure acceptable operation in the future. To enable such analyses, this article presents an open-source testbed that jointly simulates high-fidelity models of both the electric distribution system and the transportation network. The testbed utilizes two open-source simulators, OpenDSS to simulate the electric distribution system and the microscopic traffic simulator SUMO to simulate the traffic dynamics. Electric vehicle charging links the electric distribution system and the transportation network models at vehicle locations determined using publicly available parcel data. Leveraging high-fidelity synthetic electric distribution system data from the SMART-DS project and transportation system data from OpenStreetMap, this testbed models the city of Greensboro, NC down to the household level. Moreover, the methodology and the supporting scripts released with the testbed allow adaption to other areas where high-fidelity geolocated OpenDSS datasets are available. After describing the components and usage of the testbed, we exemplify applications enabled by the testbed via two scenarios modeling the extreme stresses encountered during evacuations. 

   more » « less
5. The Economics of Electric Vehicles

   https://doi.org/10.1086/725484  

   Rapson, David S; Muehlegger, Erich (June 2023, Review of Environmental Economics and Policy)