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17.03.2009 
Siemens is carrying out intensive research into the subject of electromobility. The Corporate Technology
department and the sectors Energy and Industry of the integrated technology company are investigating
both the requirements that must be met by the electric car itself and the design of the infrastructure
of associated electrical networks. In particular, the researchers are concerned with energy
generation and distribution, the management of traffic and energy, smart metering, power
electronics, software, sensors and, of course, the electrical drives and the recovery and
storage of energy.
Making the supply of energy less dependent on fossil fuels requires regenerative energy-production
strategies. In the future, electrically powered vehicles could establish themselves as a mobile
and flexible element within a framework of this type. An electric car is simultaneously both
a means of transport and a mobile energy-storage device that can also be used as a source of
energy in public networks in the medium term.
To this end, the energy and communications interfaces to the power grid should be standardized,
so that rapid charging processes can be coordinated with little effort across the whole grid.
Studies of the network infrastructure therefore make up one component of the research at Siemens
and its collaborative projects with partners. Electromobility could become an element of the
environmental portfolio of Siemens, which generated sales of 19 billion euros for the company
in fiscal year 2008.
Siemens Energy, for example, is participating in the EDISON project (Electric vehicles in
a Distributed and Integrated market using Sustainable energy and Open Networks), which is
studying innovative ways of linking electric vehicles to the power supply grid in Denmark.
The objective is the standardization of electrical energy-storage equipment and the
development of charging and discharging technologies for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Preliminary studies have shown that of the millions of cars in the industrial countries,
over 90 percent are idle for comparatively long periods of time each day.
If these electric vehicles were equipped with appropriately powerful batteries, they could
be used as an intermediate storage medium for energy, provided that a suitable infrastructure
were present. As a technology partner in this project, Siemens is responsible for
the coordination and delivery of key technologies, such as those that must be developed
for various types of charging stations and the associated control systems in the interest
of optimal utilization of the battery capacities.
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