In a time where environmental protection is a big topic, use of electric vehicles is steadily increasing. Many people have reservations to use this new technology because of the limited range of electric vehicle. The range is influenced by many parameters like velocity, ramp, weight and so on. In respect of such facts prediction of range is a very important but difficult topic. One thinkable solution is to model the electric vehicle by using physical properties. Such approaches are restricted to a specific vehicle type and it is not possible to transfer the solution without a good deal of work. In this paper, we present a new approach, which is not restricted to vehicle types, by using statistical methods.

In this paper, we describe our integrated approach to improve requirements elicitation and system specification by supporting a strong and direct involvement of all stakeholders, including non technical personnel, in the early phases of a project. This so-called CUTA4UML approach comprises a framework of methods, tools and feedback cycles that is based on the concept of Participatory Design (PD) and instantiated via an extended version of a user-driven "card game" (CUTA). This card game can be executed on paper or via electronic means. Our focus will be on the system's dynamic aspects which are, always, especially tricky to cover. We will also take a closer look at the inherently involved problem to match the rather informal results of such an card-based approach to a quite formal (UML -- Activity Diagrams) modeling technique -- a step necessary to make the results useful in a structured development process and, so far, one of the weak points in all of these approaches. All our concepts and conclusions are based on a sound experimental basis and have been evaluated and discussed with industrial partners, mostly in a context of small and medium sized companies.

The failure of projects is often based on difficulties in the direct and indirect communication between developer and customer teams. For the customer it is hard to understand the frequently used terms, process models, and technological concepts. Developers have a hard time to understand domain specific processes and structures, and exhibit a tendency to abstract concrete examples to higher level constructs. This makes it difficult for the customer team to understand the developing architecture and processes, and to match their needs and intentions, during evaluation phases, to seemingly unrelated generalised drawings and specifications. This set of problems is especially hard to avoid during the development of dynamic, distributed systems with multiple nodes and possibly asynchronous behaviour.Our research tries to mediate in this conflict by providing a customer-friendly reference model as basis of communication in early development phases. This model presents and simulates the dynamic aspects of (distributed) systems without immediate abstraction from examples and allows for a stepwise generalisation and evaluation with help of the customer team. In its final version the reference model will serve as a requirements statement for the professional developer.

This paper discusses the need for and the use of a software architecture as an important means in the development of complex systems. We start out with a brief analysis of the term "complex" with regard to computerized systems. On this basis, we introduce software architectures as a means to cope with the software design aspect of system complexity. We then identify the architectural concepts that are necessary to capture a comprehensive, high level system design and discuss their characterizing properties. Finally, we propose a "construction-oriented" technique for architecture specification which is based on a generic set of architectural elements and is supported by a tool, d-ASPECT (domain Architecture Specification Tool), currently under development at NJIT.