Evoque_e Project JLR

In 2013 a consortium of 12 companies, including Jaguar Land Rover and Cranfield University, won a £16.3m Innovate UK research and development contract to demonstrate state-of-the-art, next-generation hybrid and battery-electric powertrain technologies.  I had the pleasure of working with Amir on this project (titled Evoque_e) where I led one of five work packages, with a budget of over £1m and responsibility for delivering vehicle dynamics and efficiency - activities included novel control algorithm development to maximise regenerative energy recovery whilst optimising multi-machine torque vectoring to deliver On Road Agility and Off Road Capability.

Throughout this two-year project, Amir led the development of our simulation environment (both hardware and software), which was used by the rest of the project team to develop and validate their control algorithms. Amir's development philosophy was both methodical and ordered, taking a structured approach that meant colleagues always had suitable simulation tools available to support their work.  The environment he developed started out as a basic desktop simulation, and evolved greatly in terms of capability and complexity, maturing into a full simulation rig incorporating powered braking, electric power steering and rapid prototyping control hardware.

Amir took real ownership of this facility, and the whole project team were very happy with the results.  Within just 24 months, we created three brand new ‘Concept_e’ vehicles (on different chassis architectures) that went on to form part of JLR’s low and zero emissions future (e.g iPace).  It would not have been possible to achieve this without the excellent facilities that Amir delivered, on time and to the required quality.

Simon Hegarty

Hybrid Controls Strategy Developer, Jaguar Land Rover