International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

The development of ecological and efficient vehicles powered by hydrogen or electricity is one of the priorities of the automotive industry at the moment. These new propulsion systems should come as a replacement for the internal combustion engines, which use gasoline or diesel fuel and therefore produce toxic emissions. One of the problems, that hydrogen powered vehicles face, is hydrogen storage and that is the main topic of our paper Conventional technologies for hydrogen storage, like high pressure and cryogenic reservoirs, have many drawbacks in terms of compactness, mass (weight), efficiency and safety. In order to get over these problems, there have been many researches throughout the years in effort to develop new, commercially available technologies. The most advanced storage technologies today, are tanks filled with metal hydrides which absorb hydrogen by forming chemical bonds with it, and tanks filled with large contact surface materials that are able to adsorb hydrogen. In this paper we will present the requirements that these solutions have to fulfill, their current level of development and the expectations for future improvement and usage.

Electrical vehicles are in a new phase of development and utilisation. It has been a long time before such initiatives have taken place. In the meantime the transport as a whole (vehicles, roads, traffic, etc.) has been significantly changed. As expected the main role in this process globally, and regionally is taken by the biggest economies and companies. Besides the environmental priorities, the nature of transport which does not recognise borders enforces smaller economies and countries to adopt their policies in this area, and take chances of the development. This seems to be very complex process with number of challenges. Some of them are very specific for different countries, and it is up to the local researchers to recognize and deal with them. This paper addresses the problem of the infrastructure, i.e. developing of a network of charging stations. Since there are number of specific technical aspects accompanying electric vehicles (types of vehicles, range, charging limitations, price, etc.), the research has started with analysis of the vehicle fleet, road network, and intensity of the traffic in different areas of Republic of Macedonia. This picture is compared with technical characteristics of emerging electric vehicles on the market. That was the way to recognize advantages and disadvantages of use of electric vehicles as substitution of some of the vehicles in the actual fleet. Possible development of use of electric vehicles in the country had to be estimated based on foreign experiences, and such policies in the country. As a result an approach towards development of network of charging stations in Republic of Macedonia has been defined. There is an obvious need this view to be widely presented and discussed with a possible outcome to serve as contribution to the challenges similar countries will face soon.

The launch of electric vehicles and ITS initiated new challenges for design related ergonomics in the vehicles, especially in the field of Human Machine Interface (HMI). This research is motivated by the necessity for evaluation of current ergonomic and design solutions of contemporary vehicles. The presented study included a review of available literature and regulations, state of the art, as well as operational analysis based on detailed comparison between two vehicles. The assessment has been done between two existing vehicles of the same model, the first one powered by the internal combustion engine, and the other one powered by an electric engine. The information displays, vehicle controls and secondary vehicle controls of both vehicles were carefully analyzed and compared. The results of the study are presented as a source of preliminary understanding of the newly developed technology for designers, experts dealing with safety issues and other professionals.

In this paper we have presented a methodology used to determine actual acceleration, velocity and traveled distance profiles of vehicles of different categories in urban environment, as dominant microscopic traffic flow parameters. The tests have been done on representative arterial road in the city of Skopje. Within a period of one month, we have been observing the traffic on the subject arterial road and have determined the average traffic flow during different day periods. The structure of the traffic flow has also been analyzed. In the experiment we have used a probe vehicle equipped with adequate measuring system to follow more than 130 vehicles of different categories on the observed arterial road, imitating i.e. reproducing their behavior as much as possible. The final goal to determine the domains of these microscopic traffic flow parameters in specific velocity intervals, regarding different vehicle categories was reached. These results have shown to be very useful as input parameters in the single lane urban traffic flow simulator that we have developed.