Opel RAKe
Opel’s electric vehicle concept has been developed entirely in Europe and uses conventional materials, battery technology from the Ampera, and a non-traditional seating arrangement to keep the weight low
- Published in Vehicle Development.
Photo credit: Mark Wright www.marcwright.co.uk
The RAK e seats the passenger behind the driver to reduce vehicle size
The daily commute to work could change for many drivers as more electric vehicles come to the market. Waking up and jumping in the car could become a very different experience, especially as the traditional design of a vehicle – two seats at the front, three at the rear – evolves into something more appropriate for the task.
In the future electric cars could be designed to house just the driver and a single passenger. Such small vehicles should be less expensive and therefore accessible to younger consumers.
Today’s electric vehicles are pricey – whether they are plug-in hybrids, extended-range or battery-electric cars. The Opel-Vauxhall Ampera range-extended vehicle costs €44,000, the Nissan Leaf electric car €36,000, and if you want a performance vehicle the Tesla Roadster costs €101,000.
But Opel’s RAK e electric vehicle concept has been developed to be affordable, costing an estimated €10,000. Engineers have achieved this target by intelligent use of materials and reconfiguring the layout – it seats two people, one in front of the other – to reduce size and maximise powertrain efficiency. As well as meeting a given price point and efficiency targets, the car has also been designed to be fun to drive and good to look at.
Marc Schmidt, Opel’s advanced vehicle development manager, says: “The intention of this project was to test a new configuration which isn’t typical for a car manufacturer. The car’s electrically driven, supposed to be affordable, has a range of 100km, and an autobahn speed of 120km/h.”
Unlike many of the OEM’s concept vehicles that are developed under the GM umbrella, the RAK e was a solely European project. Schmidt’s team worked out of Opel’s advanced vehicle development centre at Rüsselsheim, and also used knowledge from the battery development centre at Mainz-Kastel.
“Typically, be it a hydrogen fuel-cell car or a battery-electric vehicle, half the content is developed in Europe and half in the US, but the RAK e was done in my shop,” says Schmidt.
The main targets for the project were to make the RAK e affordable and efficient. Driving to work in the morning can often mean sitting alone in a vehicle designed for four or five people, while city concept vehicles, including GM’s EN-V, aren’t designed for motorways. “We wanted to create something in between, based on European requirements,” says Schmidt. “Studies show that a typical customer would commute 60-70km to and from work. Including a safety cushion, we arrived at a 100km range. Then you have to be autobahn capable because otherwise you’ll never get to your workplace.”
Matching the speed of other vehicles on the motorway meant giving the RAK e a top speed of 120km/h. It can accelerate to 100km/h in 13 seconds.
Schmidt and his team achieved the performance requirement by using a 36.5kW motor with 10.5kW of continuously available power.
The RAK e uses the same battery technology as the Opel-Vauxhall Ampera, but, rather than a 16kWh lithium-manganese spinel pack, the size has been reduced to just 6kWh – of which 5kWh is usable capacity.
