Brussels, Belgium│2 February 2016
The FABRIC One-Day Conference, which focused on the challenges and concepts of the Wireless dynamic charging for FEVs, was successfully held in Brussels, on the 2^nd of February 2016.  The Conference was organized by ICCS and hosted by ERTICO-ITS Europe and gathered approximately 70 participants from 15 different countries, including policy makers, standardization experts, OEMs, solution providers as well as representatives of the academic and research community.

The conference was inaugurated by Mr. Hermann Meyer, CEO of ERTICO-ITS Europe, who welcomed the participants and introduced ERTICO activities, emphasizing in the Electromobility area and specifically on the FABRIC activities towards its large-scale deployment. Following that, Mr. Angelos Amditis, Research Director of ICCS and FABRIC project Coordinator, presented the motives for wireless dynamic charging for EVs, their important advantages compares to other EV charging technologies and introduced the objectives and goals of the Conference. In addition, Mr. Maurizio Maggiore, the Project Officer of FABRIC, presented the strategic questions that arise regarding the large-scale deployment of Electromobility and he emphasized on the need to figure out the directions regarding Electromobility and pay close attention to the user needs. He also stated that interoperability is of great importance and highlighted the need to assess the strengths and weaknesses of all charging technologies before taking important deployment decisions.The opening session ended with the speech of Mr. Alessandro Coda, Research Director of EUCAR, who introduced EUCAR, its mission and the three Strategic Pillars for collaborative research and innovation (R&I) in the automotive sector to the attendees. In addition, he also presented the projects where EUCAR is involved and officially supports in the framework of the Strategic Pillar of Sustainable Propulsion.

During the 1^st technical session, the FABRIC project activities as well as some initial results were presented to the attendees. Specifically, Mr. Angelos Amditis (ICCS) gave an overview of the project’s status and developments during the first two years of its duration while Mr. Peter Vermaat (TRL) presented the charging solutions and prototypes which are under development in the project. After that the activities in the Italian and French tests sites were presented by Mr. Paolo Guglielmi (POLITO) and Mr. Stephane Laporte (VEDECOM) respectively. The framework, methodology and preliminary results for the feasibility analysis of wireless dynamic charging within FABRIC was also discussed by Mr. Sebastian Meijer (KTH). Finally, the ICT requirements, functionalities and existing gaps for dynamic charging as identified within FABRIC were presented by Mr. Andrew Winder (ERTICO).
The next session, gathered key experts from several standardization bodies, associations and related platforms with basic aim to discuss the potential of wireless dynamic charging in the scope of standardization and policy drawing and implementation. Particularly, the eMI³ platform activities for Electromobility were presented by Andrew Winder (ERTICO) and the current status of static and dynamic wireless EV charging was presented by Mr. Nicholas Keeling (Qualcomm). After that, Mr. Gian Maurizio Rodella (CUNA) introduced the future plans of international standardization bodies for Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) and gave a short presentation of CUNA, the national representative of Italy to ISO and CEN and Mr. Peter Van den Bossche (Vrije Universiteit Brussels) talked about the IEC standardization for WPT.

The conference continued with a Round Table Discussion that focused on the following issues/questions:  

• Trends and roadblocks towards the wide deployment of Electromobility;
•  How far are we from the deployment of dynamic charging? What are the obstacles?
• Which charging technology is the more likely candidate for deployment?

The discussion panel, that consisted by well-known experts from ALSTOM, Viktoria Swedish, Hubject, CRF and KAIST, identified interoperability of the developed systems and standardization as issues of high importance for the wide deployment of Electromobility. Regarding the obstacles for the wireless charging deployment it was commonly agreed that the cost, mainly for building the required infrastructure, is the biggest one. Other roadblocks that were pointed out are related to V2G connection, safety and EM interference, the current regulatory framework (or the lack of it) and standardization as well as the lack of business models. Regarding which technology is the more likely candidate for deployment it was mentioned that this issue highly depends on politics and needs for standardization.

Brusaglino Giampiero, ATA │ Presentation (PDF) │2-4.12.2015, European Battery, Hybrid and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle Congress (EEVC 2015), Brussels, Belgium