UBMC(Universal Battery Management Cloud Service) Update Electric Bikes with Battery Status Monitoring

As people become more environmentally-conscious, the electrification of mobility is accelerating around the world. The source of its power is the battery. Having been involved in the development of batteries for many years, Panasonic has been developing battery management services to enable suppliers of electric mobility to use batteries with peace of mind and avoid problems due to unexpected power shortages or failures.

In order to achieve such a service, in the spring of 2018, Panasonic approached glafit, a start-up company that manufactures and sells next-generation mobility, to collaborate. A co-creation activity was launched between Panasonic and glafit, which at the time was facing challenges in operating batteries for electric hybrid bikes (hereinafter referred to as "electric bikes").

First, we conducted a demonstration experiment in which 30 electric bikes were shared among students and employees for eight months from July 2019 on the Ito Campus of Kyushu University, which has one of the largest land areas among national universities in Japan. In an environment where electric bikes are actually used, battery log data was automatically collected from electric bikes to narrow down the requirements for the development of a battery management service, including the functions necessary for the service and efficient data collection methods. In the process, it became clear that ability to accurately grasp the remaining battery level is important for users of electric bikes, and that there was a need to remotely monitor the timing of battery replacement for electric bikes throughout the site. This eventually led us to consider a cloud-based battery management service (hereinafter referred to as "cloud-based BMS").