Last March ReFreeDrive project, coordinated by CIDAUT, reached the half of its length. The ReFreeDrive project is focused on contributing to avoid the use of rare earth magnets through the development of a next generation of electric drivetrains, ensuring the industrial feasibility for mass production while focusing on the low cost of the manufacturing technologies.
ReFreeDrive project is expected to achieve an incremental reduction in total motor and power electronics system costs through optimised design for manufacture, increasing the performance of both electric motors and power electronics. Specifically, ReFreeDrive project aims at achieving a motor torque increase of 30% while halving motor losses, increasing power density in power electronics by 50% and reducing production costs around 15% against similar solutions (Reference: Tesla Model S60).
On the occasion of the 18 months since the beginning of the project, its partners met on 20th and 21st March at Brussels for a new General Assembly meeting. During the meeting, the tasks carried out by the partners during the last six months were reviewed, and the status of the different Work Packages was analysed in order to define actions for the second half of the project, when the 8 e-Drives (200kW and 75kW) will be manufactured and tested.
Also on these days CIDAUT attended the joint GV04 dissemination event, which took place in Brussels, too. The workshop presented the innovations that are currently being developed by three EU-funded projects under the European Green Vehicles Initiative (EGVI): ModulED, ReFreeDrive and DRIVEMODE. This event allowed exploring synergies between the three projects in order to maximize the outcome of the innovations under development within each one of them.
More than 100 people showed interest in the event and around 75 of them attended the workshop (36 people belong to the project consortia, while 68 people are external audience), many of them belonging to leading edge organizations in the field of electric drivetrain design and innovation.