BeMobility: Buro Happold Partners Berlin Elektromobil 2.0

10/01/2012 No comments

With an increasing world population and all the strains it brings on our planet’s finite resources denser urbanisation is key in the drive to become more sustainable. Buro Happold is committed to understanding and applying our expansive technical expertise to the social, economic and environmental factors that underpin the development of more sustainable, carbon neutral cities – Smart Cities.

Mobility is one of the key issues at the heart of improving the quality of urban life; the development of e-mobility can play an important role in reducing CO₂ emission if developed alongside, and powered, by renewable energy sources such as wind, water or photovoltaics.

Building on BeMobility

As part of our commitment to this challenge Buro Happold has become a partner of Berlin elektromobil 2.0, an interdisciplinary research project financed by the German federal ministry of transport, Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau und Stadtentwicklern (BMVBS). The project builds on the earlier work of BeMobility which over the last two years has seen a fleet of 40 electric cars integrated into Berlin’s public transport system complete with 17 charging stations, (located mainly at railway stations), and the establishment of an integrated IT and user interface. Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national railway, and the Innovation CEntre for Mobility and Societal Change (InnoZ) coordinated this project in cooperation with partners from the car and energy industries, logistics and public transport.

Berlin elektromobil 2.0 has just started a two year programme which will build on the achievements of the previous project by further developing the quality and availability of the service and its links to public transport and car sharing systems, along with the integration of a smart grid. By becoming part of the urban smart grid, e-mobility has the potential to stabilise the supply of electricity from renewable energy by adding extra storage. This stored energy can flow back into the main supply system if needed and stabilise an often volatile supply of electricity.

Buro Happold will have a coordinating role as interface and partner manager as well as being involved in three of the project’s seven work packages:

• The development and implementation of e-mobility infrastructure concepts for the urban environment in coordination with various stakeholders
• Spatial integration of charging stations within Berlin
• Development, visualisation and communication of the urban e-mobility project

Making e-mobility more accessible

Installing more charging stations in Berlin will require the supervision and coordination of a large number of stakeholders to ensure expectations are managed and all views and interest from the public and private sectors are considered to make certain they are situated in the optimum locations for greatest use.  Models and concepts will be developed during this process to communicate the project vision and plans.  Once complete it is hoped the concept can be transferred and taken up by other cities.

The development and up-take of e-mobility is very much dependent on creating relationships between other mobility concepts and linking with other, alternative traffic providers. Deutsche Bahn, for example, considers electric cars to be a key part of their mobility concept and has developed "Flinkster", the largest car-sharing fleet in Germany.

In addition to the transport itself smart-phones and bespoke applications for car sharing are being developed to provide intelligent communication techniques. It is this integration of energy systems,
e-mobility and urban infrastructure that will enable the development of successful business models.

The future is e-mobility

Currently urban e-mobility is still in the phase where it is mainly being used by ‘early adopters’ and ‘lead users’, although there is already a great deal of interest in the concept of car sharing schemes. To allow spontaneous, instant access to e-mobility it is essential to have enough vehicles available in convenient locations; the plan is to have 100,000 cars available by 2020. The project’s aim is to increase take up of the scheme and its public acceptance to the point where it can compete competitively with privately owned fuel driven cars.