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Due to recent oil price crisis and an ever-increasing public awareness on environmental issues, an interest in electric vehicles (EV) has increased tremendously in Thailand and other Asian countries over the last few years. In this study, a prototype of 9-metre battery electric vehicle (BEV) bus was chosen as a vehicle of interest to undergo a series of field test by operating the lead acid battery powered electric bus in order to estimate a power demand of the bus as well as to evaluate a battery performance characteristic Two different types of battery were employed in this study i.e. a flooded-type deep cycle lead acid battery and a valve regulated lead acid (VRLA) battery. The effect of different driving modes available from the drive motor i.e. normal, max power, max range, as well as regenerative braking feature would be investigated while an influence of drivers were also taken into account to ensure the repeatability of the obtained results.

A vehicle of interest in this paper was a light agriculture truck. In order to obtain reliable predictions of stress generated in the frame under loads, a combination of experimental tests and computer simulations was arranged. Since the focused deformations were bending and torsion modes, the truck driven up one-wheel ramp and two-wheel ramp was investigated. Strains results obtained from both tests and simulations were compared. The discussions and conclusions were made regarding the accuracy and further improvements of the simulations.

In this study, a prospect of employing electric fans in a battery cooling system was investigated by means of a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis. The concept was to have the fans to stimulate appropriate air flows inside the battery compartment. A rear utility space behind back passenger seats was dedicated for the battery compartment containing 100 cells of Lithium Ion batteries. Due to limited working space, a battery arrangement was conceived as a double stacking configuration. In computational analysis, the heat source model of employed batteries was obtained from the experimental work. Several potential designs of cooling patterns were investigated. The design parameters of interest were locations of inlet/outlet, and air flow rate. The performance criteria of cooling system were resulting battery temperatures, temperature distribution uniformity, required pump pressure, and structural integrity.

In order to use an electric induction motor to power an automotive vehicle, heat occurred in a motor is an important issue. Generally, an induction motor could be operating at a high load for many extensive periods. The generated heat in motor could cause damage on motor parts subsequently decreasing their useful service life. The objective of this study was to develop a cooling system of the induction motor by introducing liquid coolant passages on a housing part to obtain higher cooling efficiency than that of conventional Totally Enclosed Fan Cooled system (TEFC). Principally, conventional TEFC finned housing and rear fan would be replaced by a cylindrical aluminum housing. Special heat transfer oil was chosen as a coolant mainly due to its dielectric property. The liquid cooling housing geometry was defined by series of cooling passages to guide the liquid coolant through and around the housing. The design of liquid cooling system was performed via computational simulation.