Electric vehicles (EVs) are increasingly being used, as they are more environmentally friendly than conventional vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE). Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) can be said to have zero exhaust emissions only if the electricity used to drive these vehicles is obtained in an environmentally friendly way. It is common knowledge that BEVs have a significantly higher overall mass than conventional vehicles. The significantly higher total vehicle weight of BEVs can have various adverse effects on energy consumption during movement and the vehicle's dynamics. In contrast to the negative aspects of BEVs, there are also positive aspects that are primarily related to the comfort of drivers and passengers, considering the main fact that they do not require the presence of a floor tunnel. In this paper, trends related to BEVs in the previous five years were statistically analysed. Changes in average sizes related to BEVs are shown, primarily internal dimensions that can be of crucial importance when deciding between BEVs and conventional vehicles. In the paper itself, other important trends are presented, both for the electric motor itself and for the batteries used in BEVs.

One of the key challenges facing the modern automotive industry is aligning customer demands with increasingly stringent environmental regulations and policies. In addition to introducing various modifications and improvements to internal combustion...

Braking system is one of the most important components of a vehicle on the road. This system has the task to bring the vehicle to stop or slow down. Friction brakes, during the braking process, convert the kinetic and potential energy into the thermal energy (heat). The basic components of braking systems, brake discs and brake pads, in a short period of time absorb a large amount of heat release (Travaglia et al. 2014). The absorbed heat must be, as far as possible, effectively dissipated in order to ensure the normal operation of the braking system (Day et al. 1984). High temperature during the braking process may cause many problems such as thermal cracks, premature wear, brake fade and thermally-excited vibration (Lee 1999). In this study, a typical disc brake system was modeled including brake disc and pads. Using COMSOL Multiphysics 5.0, we investigated thermal behavior of two types of discs - solid and vented dics. The results show that the vented disc is a much better solution than the solid disc, because the greater amount of heat is released for the same amount of time.

Knowing and understanding the parameters influencing the concentration of particles created by brake wear, as one of the main contributors to non-exhaust emissions from vehicles, is important for the further development of systems on vehicles to reduce the concentration of particles, and also for further research in the field of developing new friction pairs. In this research, a brake inertial dynamometer was used to measure brake particles, and four different brake pads were examined. Based on a previous review of the applied tests and driving cycles, the braking parameters were determined, i.e., the initial simulated speed of the vehicle, the load of one-quarter of the vehicle, and the brake pressure. The ambient temperature, air humidity, coefficient of friction between friction pairs, deceleration, and braking time can have an influence depending on the brake pad. Further, during the measurement, the temperatures of the brake pads were also measured, where the initial temperature of the brake pads was always the same. In order to process the data, several methods were used, including the presentation of the obtained results in a time domain, the application of the Taguchi design of the experiment with the analysis of the parameters, and a correlation analysis using the Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients. In this research, the authors concluded that the influences of the parameters primarily depend on the applied brake pads. The vehicle speed turned out to have a large influence in all cases, as did the load, i.e., the influence of the vehicle weight (indirectly through the kinetic energy of the vehicle). In this case, the pressure showed less influence on the particle concentration. An important braking parameter that has a significant impact on the concentrations of PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ particles is the final temperature of the brake pads.