Vehicles drive our national economy. In the U.S. alone, they transport more than 11 billion tons of freight and travel over 3 trillion miles per year. However, vehicle emissions impact our environment and cost lives, and fluctuations in oil prices create economic volatility. Electric vehicles (EVs) offer tremendous opportunity to both reduce emissions and stabilize and reduce cost. However, many questions persist on the viability of electric vehicles and the charging demands at scale. The NSF Engineering Research Center for Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification (ASPIRE) will take a holistic approach to eliminating range and charging as barriers for electrifying all vehicle classes, from passenger cars to heavy duty trucks. ASPIRE's approach is to pursue innovative wireless and plug-in charging and infrastructure technology solutions that bring the power to the vehicles—where they drive and park. The result will be smaller and longer lasting batteries on vehicles, effectively unlimited EV range, and a ubiquitous charging experience. EV users will no longer be concerned with when, where, or how they will charge, and EVs will be less expensive to purchase and operate than their gasoline and diesel counterparts.
The mission of the NSF ASPIRE ERC is to achieve sustainable and equitable change in the transportation and electric utility industries, while improving overall quality of life and health. The ASPIRE team and its influence will be central to infusing new technology and preparing for a future of autonomous and electric fleets as we invest as a nation to rebuild our aging roads and electric utility infrastructure. At the heart of ASPIRE, is a fundamental focus on students and community. ASPIRE will champion inclusive pathways from varied aspects of life into its programs and develop a diverse engineering workforce specially trained to support the ensuing cross-industry transformations. The ASPIRE programs will result in broad public dissemination of technology advances, methods, and tools, and a vast library of vetted precollege, undergraduate, graduate, professional, and community educational content.
The NSF ASPIRE ERC is founded on a comprehensive research program to achieve convergence and deep integration across disciplines, fueling innovation and value creation. The research thrusts, Transportation, Adoption, Power, and Data (TAPD), are tightly coupled with immersive Engineering Workforce Development, Diversity and Culture of Inclusion and Innovation Ecosystem components. With seamless integration of wireless and wired charging, ASPIRE targets an integrated systems-of-systems approach to co-optimize transportation and electric utility systems and end-user experience and productivity, allowing significant departure from conventional thinking. This approach occurs at the nexus of electrical-mechanical-thermal design of vehicles, charging systems, pavements, and power systems, data fusion and dynamic optimization of networked and co-dependent systems, and econometrics, policy, user acceptance, and environmental and societal impacts. New fundamental insights will be gained in methods and materials to integrate charging infrastructure into long-life pavements. New data science innovations in solving large-scale, nonlinear, nonconvex, and NP-hard problems in offline and real-time settings (integrated across the electric grid and transportation systems) will have significant impact on systems design and optimization. New economic, behavioral, and social science models and frameworks will be developed to allow the team to breakout of conventional thinking when considering the societal, policy, consumer, and market perspectives of and integration with technology elements. The ASPIRE ERC’s unique holistic and convergent research approach is critical to advancing and sustaining the envisioned equitable transformations across the industries.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
