This paper presents an analysis of the costs, failure rate, vulnerability, and safety of electric, hybrid, and internal combustion vehicles (EV, HEV, and ICEV), including a review of literature sources, calculations, and investigations. Many literature sources do not provide information on maintenance costs (including repairs and servicing) and limit themselves to energy costs only. However, this cost is not the total cost of the maintenance of a vehicle. There is a lack of analysis of the difference between the maintenance and operating costs of vehicles. Similarly, vulnerability is difficult to determine in vehicles that are used for a short time in the market. The article presents an analysis of literature sources and industry reports on electromobility on maintenance costs, determines the failure rate, calculates vulnerability indices based on a survey, and carries out an expert risk assessment using the FMEA method. In the surveyed companies, the largest percentage of repairs are maintenance and service, mechanical, electrical and electronic, bodywork, and other repairs for each vehicle. Some of the most common faults in electric and hybrid vehicles are battery failures. The only hazard with a tolerable impact is the lack of sufficient data in the maintenance analysis. This risk can be mitigated in subsequent stages of product readiness once more data have been analysed.

Current design processes can be simplified and accelerated if computer simulation based on finite element method (FEM) is used. FEM numerical calculations of different wheels of railway wheelsets are investigated in the Department of Railway Engineering. The justification for undertaking this issue is that there is no methodology in the design of railway wheelsets both in Poland and abroad; there is no possibility of optimizing wheelsets' construction characteristics depending on manufacturing process and service parameters. The analysis of this problem has made possible: (a) comparison of software used so far in strain calculation of railway wheelsets; (b) elaboration of design methodology for railway wheelsets; (c) increase in durability of railway wheelsets; (d) increase in the safety of rail transport; (e) decrease in manufacturing and service costs of railway wheelsets.

Safety monitoring provides the detection of changes in systems or operations that may suggest any case of approaching a point close to exceeding the acceptable safety standards and indicates whether corrective/prevention actions have been taken. Safety information should be maintained within the scope of transport undertakings to ensure safety and be communicated to all responsible staff, depending on each person’s function in the processes. Regulatory authorities should continuously monitor the implementation of safety management processes and the processes performed by road transport service providers. Safety management, therefore, requires investment in development and modernisation to meet market needs resulting from the mobility of residents, the growth of transport, and the obligations of countries resulting from the transport and environmental policy pursued by the European Union. Along with changes in the transport system, a need to assess their significance for the transport system’s safety arises. Depending on the transport mode (rail, air, water, road), the scope of standardised requirements is quite different each time. The paper analyses the legal requirements and acceptable practices for assessing the significance of the change in all transport modes and develops a standard method for assessing the significance of the change that meets all the requirements of electromobility safety management systems.

This paper presents an application of the FMEA (Failure mode and effects analysis) to evaluate the operational risk in railway transport. The methodology developed by the Department of Rail Transport (KTS), including approval thresholds for risk adopted, the model forms (hazard record, FMEA form) were adopted in the Polish railways as a standard to evaluate the operational risk for operators and infrastructure managers. Reacting to the development of requirements for security management - Regulation EC No 445 of 2011 - Department of Rail Transport proposed the standard RAMS - PN - EN 50126 to oversee rail vehicles. This solution is currently being implemented in several entities building maintenance management systems (MMS) for the wagons. This article is dedicated to the people who deal with issues of safety management both in the transport of goods and people as well as the maintenance of rail vehicles.

The targeted liberalisation of the European Union railway market in 1998 could have lead to a decrease in the safety of rail transport. To prevent this, the European Commission developed and implemented new requirements in this area without explicitly deciding on the methods and tools to be used for their implementation. Entities operating in the market faced a new challenge, the development of a systems model approach to safety management. Only a correctly designed process model, along with the appropriate tools for monitoring and managing risk, allows the level of safety to be maintained at current levels or improved. As part of the research, solutions were developed for a systems approach to safety management in railway transport and the risk management and maintenance monitoring of railway vehicles. Safety is an essential criterion for assessing the functioning of a railway system, it determines its efficiency as well as – in a widely understood sense – the quality of its transport services. This paper describes the legal requirements and practical methods of implementation arising from the issue of Directive 2004/49/EC as it concerns the monitoring of railway safety (Chruzik et al. 2014). The directive enforces the gradual introduction of Common Safety Targets (CST) and Common Safety Methods (CSM) to maintain (or increase) the existing high safety levels after the opening up (liberalisation) of the rail market. The introduction of CST and CSM necessitates the development of methods for the evaluation of the level of safety and activity of operators, both at the level of the Member States and also at the level of the European Union. The paper describes the practical solutions developed for railway operators as part of the implementation of maintenance management systems (Sitarz et al. 2013; Chruzik et al. 2014).