AV-CONNECT, INC. — Department of Energy SBIR Phase II: C50-12c

Description

Electric vehicles present a critical opportunity to reduce the local and global impacts of fossil fuelbased transportation. So far, operators have struggled to tap into this opportunity because of the differences between how electric and Diesel fleets are operated and the higher cost per miles of operating an electric fleet. The company developed an electric fleet management software product that provides routing and charging recommendations to improve efficiency and utilization of electric vehicles in commercial fleets. The product brings the cost/km of operating an electric bus fleet is below a diesel bus fleet. The approach has two main pillars. The first is to learn digital twins of electric vehicles combining their telematics data with the driving context. The second pillar is to use the learned digital twins to produce optimization-based recommendations including routes, choosing charging locations, and scheduling of charging In Phase I the company developed and validated a learning-based eco-routing platform with measured energy savings of 15%-20%. In Phase II the company built on the Phase I work and (1) developed an electric vehicle routing service which recommends both routes and charging stops; (2) obtain high prediction accuracy in a variety of dynamic real-world conditions. The company packaged the Phase I and II results into an electric fleet management software product that has shown up to 2X improved utilization of electric vehicles in commercial fleets with current paying customers in the transit space. The company’s electric fleet management software product currently supports fixed-schedule transit fleets of limited size. Most commercial fleets plan to greatly expand their electric fleets in the next few years. The proposed Phase IIB research and development is vital to prepare the company’s product for this upcoming scenario. The plan includes scaling of the software infrastructure, and addresses the scalability of data, models, and algorithms that are integral to the product. Scaling the company’s electric fleet management software product to support up to 100 fleets, up to 10,000 vehicles and delivery and transit fleets will provide a demonstrable financial Return on Investment to commercial fleet operators to accelerate their transition to electric on a sound economic basis. Accelerating the transition to electric will lead to massive CO2 equivalent reduction, a dramatic reduction of crude oil imports from foreign sources, and cleaner air and less noise pollution, particularly for disadvantaged US communities who use public transit.