Increasing urbanization requires innovative vehicle concepts. Within the EU-funded project “epsilon”, fka as project coordinator was responsible for creating the concept for the entire vehicle, the package and the structure in CAD.

The concept is specially designed to meet urban requirements. As a fully electric vehicle it is not affected by regional ‘no drive’ zones. The main application is commuter traffic. The basic requirements safety and low maintenance costs are amended to include enough room, comfort and an agile driving performance.

Within the conflict of objectives between safety and efficiency, lightweight design becomes more and more important. Reduced energy consumption can help to reduce battery capacities and costs for purchase and maintenance.

With its innovative aluminum spaceframe, the “epsilon” has a kerb weight of only 600 kg and successfully fills the gap between category L lightweight vehicles and common passenger, category M1, cars.

The design of the hybrid body structure is based on appropriate material models, static analyses and considerable FE crash simulations with our computing cluster.

The result is a driving prototype to prove the potential of this new vehicle category – excellent driving dynamics, NCAP safety levels and an energy consumption of less than 8 kWh per 100 km or converted to CO₂–emissions only 40 g per kilometer.