26 // January 2020 // www.electrichybridvehicletechnology.com
5. A London trial using
Transit Custom PHEVs
revealed 75% of 150,000
miles used electric power
6. James McGeachie,
engineering director
at Prodrive Advanced
Technology, helped
develop the electric vehicle
7. As well as the plug-in
hybrid, a fully-electric
Transit Custom is expected
The project could not have
been achieved to such short
timescales any other way.”
Precise packaging
One key challenge was the
packaging of the electric
powertrain. Ford was keen to offer its
customers no compromise to the internal
combustion-engined Transit Custom’s 211ft³
(6m³) load volume. Facilitated by careful
packaging of the compact battery pack beneath
the fl oor, the 13.6kWh capacity of the lithium-ion
unit is correct for current market demands,
concludes Ian Porter, chief Transit Custom
program engineer at Ford of Europe. “Battery
capacity has been specifi cally tuned to balance
the electric range, weight, and recharge times.
Based on the London trial and other data we
believe the electric range is suffi cient to meet
the urban usage requirements.”
An unnamed supplier provides the liquidcooled
battery which is mated to a 92.9kW
(126ps) permanent magnet three-phase AC
synchronous traction motor, the rating of which
Porter declares was a result of the year-long
London tests. “The fleet trial vehicles had
a smaller e-motor than the final production
solution. Data and feedback captured during
the trial helped to confirm the requirement
for a larger e-motor.”
Primary development started with the
removal of the engine and gearbox from a
diesel Transit, replaced by a three-cylinder
petrol engine and permanent magnet threephase
AC synchronous generator. The
electric drivetrain, batteries and charging
system were then added. “Everything
was squeezed into whatever space was
left from taking the diesel engine out
and whatever space we could find in the chassis under the
load bay. We were working with very small clearances,
and essentially we tripled the complexity of the drivetrain,”
reports McGeachie.
Another challenge was taking Ford’s EcoBoost threecylinder
engine and mating it to the generator. “That had
never been done before,” McGeachie says. “A key technical
barrier was the design of the coupling between those two
devices. We spent a lot of time testing the coupling to ensure
it would be a robust solution.”
Testing, testing
“We delivered the 20-vehicle fl eet for London trials, so they
had to be robust, but they also had to go through Ford’s
production vehicle test routine. It goes to show the level of
engineering these vehicles had to satisfy. Ford also took
them winter testing and the fi rst two vehicles were driven
from Dunton to Sweden. Nothing was spared just because
they were prototypes.”
The feedback from the 150,000-mile London trial
was overwhelmingly positive. It revealed that 75%
of the fleet’s mileage in Central London was
completed using electric power alone, dipping to
49% in Greater London. The first time Ford had given
such early prototypes to customers, valuable feedback
was directly incorporated into the production vehicle
development program, which was led by Ford with support
from its supplier partners. Fully connected, the Transit
Custom PHEV will offer geofencing capability from spring
2020, which can automatically switch to EV mode when
entering a low emission zone or a user-specified area.
Alongside the plug-in van, an eight-seat Tourneo Custom
PHEV shares the same powertrain, and 48V mild-hybrid
technology has found its way into new EcoBlue Diesel
Hybrid versions of the Transit Custom and two-ton Transit.
A fully-electric Transit Custom is also under development,
mooted for a 2021 launch. For now, though, with the
electrified commercial market still to reach maturity, the
Transit Custom PHEV is the right offering says Porter. “Our
customers want electrified vehicles, but we understand they
may have concerns about infrastructure and range. Transit
Custom PHEV offers no-compromise productivity and the
capability to drive on zero-emission electric power, with
freedom to make longer journeys.”
5
6
7
TECH INSIDER | FORD TRANSIT CUSTOM PHEV
/www.electrichybridvehicletechnology.com