Lightweight Electric/Hybrid Vehicle Design

About the authors
Preface ix
Electro-technology author Ron Hodkinson is very actively involved in the current value
engineering of automotive fuel-cell drive systems through his company Fuel Cell Control Ltd and
is particularly well placed to provide the basic electro-technology half of this work. He obtained
his first degree in electrical engineering (power and telecommunications) from the Barking campus,
of what is now the University of East London, on a four-year sandwich course with Plessey. At the
end of the company’s TSR2 programme he moved on to Brentford Electric in Sussex where he
was seconded on contract to CERN in Switzerland to work on particle-accelerator magnetic power
supplies of up to 9 MW. He returned to England in 1972 to take a master’s degree at Sussex
University, after which he became Head of R&D at Brentford Electric and began his long career in
electric drive system design, being early into the development of transistorised inverter drives. In
1984 the company changed ownership and discontinued electronics developments, leading Ron
to set up his own company, Motopak, also developing inverter drives for high performance machine
tools used in aircraft construction. By 1989 his company was to be merged with Coercive Ltd who
were active in EV drives and by 1993 Coercive had acquired Nelco, to become the largest UK
producer of EV drives. In 1995 the company joined the Polaron Group and Ron became Group
Technical Director. For the next four years he became involved in both machine tool drives and
fuel cell controls. In 1999 the group discontinued fuel-cell system developments and Ron was
able to acquire premises at Polaron’s Watford operation to set up his own family company Fuel
Cell Control Ltd, of which he is managing director. He has been an active member of ISATA
(International Society for Automotive Technology and Automation) presenting numerous papers
there and to the annual meetings of the EVS (Electric Vehicle Seminar). He is also active in the
Power Electronics and Control committees of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. Some of his
major EV projects include the Rover Metro hybrid concept vehicle; IAD electric and hybrid vehicles;
the SAIC fuel-cell bus operating in California and Zetec taxicabs and vans.
Co-author John Fenton is a technology journalist who has plotted the recent course in EV
design and layout, including hybrid-drive vehicles, in the second half of the book, which also
includes his chapters on structure and systems design from his earlier industrial experience. He is
an engineering graduate of the Manchester University Science Faculty and became a member of
the first year’s intake of Graduate Apprentices at General Motors’ UK Vauxhall subsidiary. He
later worked as a chassis-systems layout draughtsman with the company before moving to
automotive consultants ERA as a chassis-systems development engineer, helping to develop the
innovative mobile tyre and suspension test rig devised by David Hodkin, and working on runninggear
systems for the Project 378 car design project for BMC. With ERA’s subsequent specialization
on engine systems, as a result of the Solex acquisition, he joined the Transport Division of Unilever,