Electromobility

The transport sector is one of the world's largest contributors to CO2 emissions. Decarbonizing transportation is one of the great challenges we face as humanity in the fight against climate change. There are more than 1.4 billion vehicles in circulation in the world, a figure that is still growing.

Electromobility is therefore a relevant option for decarbonizing this sector. However, there are several challenges: it is not only a matter of generating electric vehicles, both for the small vehicle market and for commercial vehicles and heavy machinery, but also of ensuring that the electric energy that recharges these vehicles is renewable, and that the electric grid infrastructure can be adapted to meet the potentially large number of electric vehicles that will be developed.

In this aspect, as Fraunhofer Chile we work on integrating electromobility as an extension of solar energy, or renewable systems in general. With the support of our network in Germany, we are working on the development of batteries with increasing capacity and efficiency, to increase the autonomy of vehicles, as well as on the development of distribution networks, so that they can support the increased load derived from the need to connect vehicles for recharging. Work is also being done to integrate more and more renewable energy into the grids, so that the electricity recharged in the vehicle batteries is indeed green, and so that a truly clean transportation system can be achieved.

Electromobility consists of any vehicle option that uses electricity stored in the form of batteries (and also in other forms, such as green hydrogen in a fuel cell vehicle).