CEiiA and Renault have been working together for several years in the area of smart mobility. Promoting the interoperability between electric mobility systems, carsharing and fleet management are common projects. CEiiA and the Renault-Nissan Alliance The relationship between CEiiA and the Renault-Nissan Alliance started in 2008 – as a reminder, the world premieres of the Nissan Leaf, in 2011, and the Renault Zoe, in 2012, were held in Portugal. This partnership, which began with electric mobility - CEiiA provides Renault and its users with real-time data of the MOBI.E network - has grown into a technology partnership extended to other areas of smart mobility, such as carsharing or fleet management. CEiiA´s embedded technology and systems allow vehicles to be used in shared services and supporting new mobility services. eMI3: Interoperability
Following the presence of Sébastien Albertus, Head of the Department of "Charging Infrastructure and Electric Mobility" at Renault, CEiiA took the chance to learn more about the Renault perspective regarding the future of mobility.
The first words of Albertus were on the issue of interoperability. Some of the first collaborations between CEiiA and Renault were precisely focused on this issue, mainly the MOBI.Europe project, which aimed to promote interoperability in Europe, and the launch of eMI3 Group, now a private association under Belgian law.
Sébastien Albertus refers that "there are currently more than 1,000 charging operators in Europe, more than 200 in Germany alone. This does not necessarily mean that there are 1,000 different standards. But it means that Renault has to establish contracts with them all. And we would prefer that there was an integration and that we had to deal with a smaller number of entities. " This intention of Renault links with CEiiA´s vision about the smart mobility of the future which is embodied in mobi.me, a system that connects all devices and integrates all mobility operators in a single platform, allowing users to choose real-time mobility options that best suits their needs considering factors such as travel time, costs and related CO2 emissions. Electric vehicles for sharing and fleets Sébastien Albertus believes there is a growing market for electric vehicles sharing in some cities, which is why Renault launched Zoe and Twizy. He also believes that urban logistics will be increasingly based on electric models, which justifies the launch of the electric Kangoo. However, there is a learning space in these two areas, and that is why Renault has established partnerships with leading organizations such as CEiiA. It´s exactly here that the various joint projects in Brazil fit. These projects are focused on the management of intelligent networks of charging points and electric vehicle fleets - Ecoelétrico Curitiba, Brasilia Ecomóvel, mob-I Foz do Iguaçu, mob-I ONU and the project with CPFL in Campinas (São Paulo).
The present and the future of electric mobility Sébastien Albertus left some additional messages that are important.
The first is that electric vehicles are critical to the stabilization of the power grid, especially in cases with a high penetration of renewables, such as Portugal. This is something we already knew at CEiiA considering that mobi.me is integrated in real-time with the power grid, which, in addition to the intelligent management of charging, allows the quantification of the emissions associated with mobility.
The second is that electric mobility has already begun in Europe. Although sales of electric vehicles are still low in Portugal, Renault already sells as many Zoe as Twingo in France, about 2,000 units per month. Not to mention the Norwegian market, the most advanced in the world.
Finally, the message that the evolution of batteries will accelerate, hoping that the density will double power in two years time, which would take Zoe's battery go from 22kWh to 44kWh. We are on the good path!
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION eMI3
Initially, the great challenge of electric mobility was to set the standard for the plugs of all electric vehicles charging stations. For some years now the challenge involves the interoperability of systems. This is a question that arises in most countries and in Europe as a whole as well, but not in Portugal, where MOBI.E, one of the projects anchored in the mobi.me platform, pioneered the creation of a the fully interoperable market environment for electric mobility.
The eMI3 - eMobility ICT Interoperability Innovation has thus emerged in 2012 as an open group that brings together key market players of the electric vehicles market in order to standardise the definitions, formats and interfaces of ICT data and share mechanisms to create a common language among all ICT platforms for electric vehicles. CEiiA is one of the founding members and belongs to the board of eMI3.
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