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Driven by the will to gain further know-how and experience in the field of electric vehicles, and to demonstrate IDIADA's engineering capability, IDIADA decided to convert an existing light commercial vehicle, a Nissan Cabstar, into a fully electric vehicle. The brake department of Applus+ IDIADA investigated and developed different concepts of Regenerative Braking Systems (RBS) for this Electric Vehicle project, all of which based on the existing braking system, but with extended sensors. Thanks to their developments and technologies, Applus+ IDIADA succeeded in demonstrating the potential of electric vehicles. This presentation, with focus on the development and integration of the concept, aims at giving a brief overview on the results achieved so far.

Novel active safety functions are introduced in road vehicles and nowadays cars, trucks and buses start to be equipped with functions to avoid collisions. The performance of these active safety functions must be possible to test and assess. There are several initiatives addressing how to test active safety. These functions are under rapid development and there is presently, and in contrast to passive safety, no generally accepted assessment programme in place. Several initiatives have identified this need for standardised testing and assessment methods over the past years. This paper gives an overview and comparison of initiatives worldwide which lately have been or are currently dealing with the topic of active safety performance testing. Among others, performance in vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-pedestrian accident scenarios is being addressed by international initiatives: the eVALUE, ASSESS and AsPeCSS projects, the vFSS working group, the CAMP-CIB initiative and the AEB group.

In today's automotive climate, the tendency of an increasing number of vehicle model variants offered is coming to a head with the growing demands for safer vehicles. New legislation now ensures that the safety improvement by the fitment of stability control systems is certified for each new vehicle. Beginning year 2012, all new cars to be sold in the European Union have to be equipped with ESC, and as means to test performance, a new supplement to ECE R13 requires that the Sine-with-Dwell test be passed. As a result, OEMs have to handle the task of demonstrating that all their vehicles meet homologation requirements. With such a range of variants possible in each model, this can lead to an enormous quantity of testing. However, for the first time, ECE R13 allows homologation to be undertaken by test-supported simulation, and it is now possible to transfer more and more of this work into CAE.

Active safety systems such as Electronic Stability Control (ESC) have been clearly demonstrated to increase vehicle safety in critical dynamic maneuvers. With such a great potential for reducing road accidents, the ESC system is being more widely fitted all over the world. As a result and in parallel with regulation initiatives, consumer organizations are expanding their assessment capabilities from passive towards active safety. Since 2008, ESC fitment promotion has been the first step for worldwide consumer organizations such as ANCAP (Australia), NASVA (Japan) and Euro NCAP (Europe). However, a major step has now been taken by Euro NCAP with the inclusion of the first active safety test in the overall Euro NCAP safety assessment programme. As of 2011, Euro NCAP performs the so called “Dwell sine” test on all cars that meet the ESC fitment requirement.

The dynamic safety concept comprises all the active safety vehicle characteristics supporting the driver in critical dynamic maneuvers. Dynamic safety is therefore a major active safety requirement with great potential for reducing road accidents throughout the world. It is the combination of not only active chassis systems (ESC, ABS...) but also passive chassis systems (tires, suspension...) which determines the overall dynamic safety performance of the vehicle. This paper describes a set of test procedures which cover with only a few specific maneuvers the widest possible range of critical dynamic situations. Beyond a simple pass/fail result, these test procedures will be able to quantify and therefore compare the dynamic safety performance. These results could be used by the suitable organizations to define a rating system to thereby increase public awareness of the dynamic safety performance of vehicles on the market.