The National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) under the Ministry of Science and Technology signed a bilateral collaboration agreement with Loxley Public Company Limited on 31 October 2014.
The goal is to develop technologies and equipment standards together to develop future electric car production in Thailand.
This collaboration should help improve the capability for Thailand to enhance its automobile production business sector to be competitive in the world market and increase value for the industry.
Dr. Narong Sirilertworakul, the NSTDA Executive Vice President revealed that NSTDA is putting major emphasis into automobile research, including the automobile parts production industry, NSTDA has been doing a lot of research on electrical vehicles especially into batteries, as the battery is the major component in the electric vehicle.
NSTDA is also doing research into Engine Control Unit (ECU), which controls all the equipment in the vehicle, as well as the breaking system.
The collaboration between the two will allow NSTDA to go forward to have its Research and Development (R&D) begin developing the battery and the charging system, as the batteries that are imported to the country are not quite compatible with the Thai system, and also to help with Loxley’s plan to provide electric bus for commercial service in the future.
Dr. Narong added that electric cars will be in high demand in the future, and that electric cars a source of power can be from many sources not just fossil fuel and natural gas.
Meanwhile, Dr. Kosol Surakomol, Advisor to Loxley Plc, said he strongly believes in two years time that, the bilateral collaboration will help the technology be ready for commercial scale production, which will starts with electric bus.
Dr. Kosol hoped that this technology will be use to replace current CNG buses, and that by shifting the technology to run purely on electric will contribute to a better environment, reducing the imports of fossil fuel to help the country save money on importing fossil fuel.
The future battery will also have to be further developed, including development of charging stations, but all will have to be studied to attain the highest efficiency for future.
