ProteanDrive enables privacy for shared mobility with NEVS

Enabling an adaptable interior and increasing space in the NEVS Sango

PONS is the connected transport ecosystem from NEVS, enabling mobility-as-a-service
for people in smart and sustainable cities. It consists of three parts: a fleet management
system, a user app and an autonomous electric vehicle called Sango.

Sango has been designed to optimize mobility in city environments, whilst maintaining
privacy when sharing a journey with strangers. The flexible interior can be adapted,
ensuring that the vehicle has the highest possible uptime with different ride and usage
demands.

With six movable seats, each fitted with privacy walls, users can divide the vehicle interior
into four smaller areas for private journeys, ride with friends using the social settings
or travel comfortably with loved ones in the family mode.

Enabling the best user experience

Comfort and the user experience were the primary considerations when designing
Sango. The vehicle needed to be able to offer the flexibility to travel in both the city and
on the highway, depending on user need. It needed to be able to ensure that travellers
felt safe and not concerned by any jerky movements when pulling away and stopping.
And it needed the interior space to be able to offer the privacy that users desire when
travelling in shared mobility services.

Choosing ProteanDrive

While developing and building Sango, the engineering team at NEVS had the
chance to evaluate various solutions to enhance the user experience. The
obvious choice of propulsion to meet the Sango user needs was ProteanDrive
in-wheel motors.

“As we were able to have Protean involved throughout the development on site
with the vehicle design and test engineers, the cooperation worked flawless
throughout the project”

Peter Dahl, Project Lead at NEVS

More Packaging Space, Better Control

In-wheel motors offer improved packaging space in the vehicle design, enabling
other system solutions and more efficient packaging of the battery pack. They
also provide greater control of vehicle dynamics – especially with a motor at each
wheel – meaning improved comfort and tunability, reduced stopping distances,
better obstacle avoidance, the ability to run on low friction surfaces, and bi-directionality.

More Passenger Space, Improved Comfort

Without the powertrain inboard, passenger capacity in the vehicle increases, the
space gain also improves access and cargo volume. An additional benefit is the
direct coupling of power request to acceleration and braking, without any driveline
lash. This increases the comfortable ride experience.

More Uptime, Improved Productivity

The reliability of any fleet vehicle is key, and depending on the safety case, ProteanDrive
in-wheel-motors provide a multiplication of redundancy. For example, a 2 wheel drive system will have 2 levels of redundancy and a 4 wheel drive system will have 4 levels of redundancy. In the worst case if one motor is shut down completely, the others can continue to operate with torque re-balanced across the vehicle to maintain performance and safety.

Solving Challenges to Deliver Future Mobility

Building an autonomous or traditional vehicle and using in-wheel motors is more
than just the hardware parts, it also contains a lot of software functionality definition
and implementation. This is traditionally a quite challenging area. Thanks to
the fast understanding, collaboration and quick implementation between NEVS
and Protean any issues that occurred were solved quickly and efficiently.

“We were happy to be given the opportunity to collaborate with NEVS when
they chose ProteanDrive in-wheel motors for their first-generation autonomous
vehicle. With NEVS we have been fully integrated throughout the development, enabling
us to deliver the maximum value for the NEVS Sango vehicle and its users.”

Richard Ford, Project Lead, Protean

Protean Electric and NEVS – Driving the future of electric vehicles, together.