The Sustainable Vehicle Engineering Centre, Oxford Brookes University
Submitted by SVEC on 5 July, 2011 - 00:22
With 60 million vehicles being scrapped to landfill annually and over 950 million vehicles on the roads of the world, future challenges revolve around the very sustainability of the automotive industry, with a focus on legislative drivers, forecasting, education, design and new technologies for future vehicles.
About the Organisation
The Sustainable Vehicle Engineering Centre (SVEC) at Oxford Brookes University is a unique platform for the whole of the automotive sector. The centre will deal with current and future challenge facing the whole life of the vehicle. Current issues concern the disassembly, disposal and the recycling and reuse of materials in the current global vehicle parc.
SVEC will investigate the materials, design issues and drivetrain concepts that will allow the development of low mass, low emission, economical vehicles that satisfy functional and safety requirements, whilst being amenable to disassembly and recovery of materials at end-of-life.
BMW Group and researchers from Oxford Brookes University recently discovered exactly how zero-emission cars cope with the demands of everyday driving. The project is centred around Oxford and will look at the way 40 volunteers in two consecutive groups drive their electric MINI E's.The year-long field trial, produced huge amounts of data, both from the battery-powered cars and in terms of driver feedback. Through questionnaires and interviews with the drivers, Oxford Brookes’ psychologists have gathered one of the best insights yet into public attitudes towards electric vehicles in the UK.
More info:
http://tech.brookes.ac.uk/svec 
