This spring, a new kind of car will be built. Aurora is the name of this car. She is constructed by a group of students at KTH to prove that smart environmentally-friendly materials and clever powering system is the way to go for the transportation industry.

Aurora is KTH’s new biobased contribution to the competition Shell Eco-marathon, which is an annual competition mainly concentrated on fuel-economy. In the competition, Aurora will be competing in the UrbanConcept class.

Biobased material

She will be made out of a revolutionary new material that just might give a glimpse into the future, namely a bio-based composite material. The bio-based composite that will be used in Aurora will to a large extent be made out of natural, regrowable materials. This means that less petroleum will be needed to manufacture the material and that the car will have less negative impact on the environment.

Hybrid drive line

The drive line in Aurora will consist of two electric engines and a HCCI-engine configured as a parallel hybrid drive line using a planetary gear. The advantage of this configuration is that all the engines, if needed, are able to directly transmit their power to the outgoing axes. The surplus energy will be stored using a energy buffer consisting of a super capacitor. When the super capacitor is full the HCCI-engine can be switched off. To make sure that as little energy as possible is wasted while breaking the electrical engines will be used to regenerate, storing energy into the super capacitor.

The video above shows how the HCCI-engine works.

 

Aurora’s sister Agilis

Aurora also has a sister, Agilis, which will also be competing in the Shell Eco-marathon but in the prototype class where the cars are allowed to have more slender futuristic streamlined shapes that look like no other car that you have ever seen.

KTH Eco Cars

Aurora and Agilis make up the KTH Eco Cars student project that involves three different departments, within three different KTH schools. The involved departments are Aeronautical and Vehicle Engineering, Machine Design and Electrical Machines and Power Electronics.