Aachen, August 2024 – FEV, a globally leading innovation driver for sustainable mobility, has developed a 48 V electric powertrain for Toyota. The latest generation of Toyota’s Accessible People Mover (APM) operated with this technology ensures that athletes, staff and officials can travel the “last mile” in a CO2-neutral way at an international sports event taking place in Paris this summer. The Japanese car manufacturer is deploying around 250 APMs in Paris to transport competitors from their accommodation to the sports venues and to transport physically handicapped visitors.
The vehicles are designed for up to six people (one driver and five passengers) and allow easy access for wheelchair users. Larger items of luggage, such as athletes’ equipment, can also be transported in the passenger compartment.
FEV has developed the 12.3 kW powertrain, accelerating the vehicle up to 20 km/h, in record time. One charge of the 9 kWh Li-ion battery pack is sufficient for distances of up to 100 km on a maximum gradient of 20 percent.
“With the development of the APM powertrain, we were able to create a reliable and technically mature propulsion concept and hand it over to the customer in April of this year after only around 24 months,” said Dr. Michael Stapelbroek, Vice President Electric Powertrain at FEV.
With this project, FEV underlines its role as a leading global development service provider for sustainable mobility solutions and has taken on the complete system design, set-up and monitoring of the supply chain as well as the development and integration of the powertrain, including extensive testing and validation. In addition to engineers from Germany, the project team also included experts from Italy, Turkey and India.
Stapelbroek explained the recipe for success behind the APM powertrain: “With an agile project approach, our international team was able to exploit the potential of our entire network. This also enabled us to successfully overcome the challenges posed by the tight project schedule.”
The features and functions of the powertrain unit were already tested on prototype vehicles during the design phase. This gave the project team time for extensive functional validation and thus a high level of technical maturity of the entire electric powertrain at an early stage.
Provide by FEV
