RICARDO UNVEILS STATE-OF-THE-ART ELECTRIC DRIVE SYSTEMS CAPABILITY

With the increasing electrification of vehicle powertrains – from electric city cars to conventional and plug-in hybrids and from motorcycles to off-highway equipment and railway locomotives – an ability to engineer best-in-class electric drive systems is an important strategic requirement for Ricardo. The recruitment of a dedicated team for this end-to-end capability, coupled with the company’s longstanding and widely acknowledged leadership in vehicle systems integration, has left Ricardo ideally placed to assist all organizations and all sectors in the electric and hybrid vehicle value chain.
“With the team that we have recruited over recent years we now have a proven capability, from research to model year programmes,” commented Ricardo hybrid and electric systems product group head Dave Greenwood. “We design and develop all electric motor types including permanent magnet, induction and switched reluctance, linear and rotary machines. We are fully independent of any manufacturer and are completely open to all and any electric drive system technology; we aim simply to provide the best possible solution for our customers every time. In terms of scale, we are already taking on projects ranging from actuators of just a few watts, through to automotive accessories and prime movers measured in tens and hundreds of kilowatts, and right up to wind and tidal turbines in the megawatt range.
“In addition to recruiting a highly skilled and specialist workforce we have also developed our own integrated tool-chain using industry standard software packages such as SPEED, MotorCAD, PC-Opera, and MagNet, as well as custom in-house Ricardo developed tools and databases, to provide a class-leading capability.”