Thank you to Ricardo de Castro, UC Merced Mechanical EngineeringAssistant Professor, who presented Planning Evacuations of Communities with High Adoption of EVs at the Institute of Transportation Studies Transportation Seminar on Friday, April 25, 2025.
Abstract: California is quickly embracing zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) as a means to decarbonize the transportation sector. According to Executive Order N-79-20, ZEVs will be the only new vehicles allowed to be sold in the state by 2035. At the same time, the state is at high risk of severe weather phenomena, such as wildfires, floods and earthquakes. For example, more than 1 million people were ordered to evacuate in California between 2017-2019 due to wildfires. These extreme events might disrupt the electric grid, introducing blackouts and limiting ZEVs recharging; in the worst-case scenario, lack of charge accessibility might compromise safe evacuation of communities using ZEVs, especially if the evacuation needs to be performed on short notice. There is an urgent need to revisit evacuation strategies of California communities, which were originally designed around vehicles with internal combustion engines and are unprepared to cope with large-scale adoption of ZEVs. This talk will introduce decision-aid tools and policy recommendations that can be used by communities and government officials to improve their preparedness for emergency evacuations using ZEVs.
Bio: Ricardo de Castro received the Licenciatura and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computers engineering from University of Porto, Faculty of Engineering, Portugal, in 2006 and 2013, respectively. During 2007-2008 he was an entrepreneur with the WeMoveU project, targeting the development of powertrain control solutions for lightweight electric vehicles. From 2013 to 2020, he was with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of System Dynamics and Control (SR), where he developed enabling technologies for electric mobility and automated driving. In 2021, he joined University of California, Merced as an assistant professor.
Throughout his career, Ricardo de Castro has been involved in the development of several electric vehicles for research and educational purposes, featuring car-to-car communications and x-by-wire actuators (ROMO), multiple electric motors (uCar) and FPGA-based high performance control units (VEP). He has been an expert evaluator for the European Union, Editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Associate Editor of IEEE Access, Guest Editor of the journal Energies and chair of technical tracks on vehicular electronics and intelligent transportation systems, IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC 2017-2018). Ricardo de Castro is also a Senior Member of the IEEE.
He is the author of three patents, more than 70 papers in international journals, conferences and book chapters, and recipient of two best paper awards.