Abstract
The ever-growing global population and the increasing demand in the emerging market for personal mobility are responsible for the growing number of roadway vehicles, which has a consequently negative impact on the environment. This problem is really critical especially for high population density cities, such as Firenze (Italy), where the large number of circulating vehicles must use a very old infrastructure that is constrained by all the historical sites widespread in the city, that are also very sensitive to air pollution. Given this picture, the traditional internal combustion engine vehicles could not be the best solution for the future personal mobility. This paper first provides an overview of different “electric-based” mobility technologies and then develops a “scoring matrix” to compare them with each other. This matrix is used to identify the optimal solution for cities like Florence. This approach investigates both the technical and customer oriented issues of a certain set of identified technologies. A survey was carried out in order to define the preferences of a sample of Firenze’s inhabitants. This paper puts forth that OLEV (On Line Electric Vehicle) developed by the KAIST (Korean Advanced Institute for Science and Technology) is the optimal technology; the reachable benefits of its implementation are also presented.
KEYWORDS – Mobility, Electric vehicles, OLEV, Wireless charging