Simulation of a distance estimator for battery electric vehicle

Abstract

Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) is a promising candidate in reducing air pollution and fossil fuel dependencies. It is a growing market for the automobile manufacturers. Although there are many advantages of driving a BEV, it is still not widely accepted in the market due to the limited driving range. Other than just improving the technologies that drive the vehicle, an additional range estimation system can calm the ‘range anxiety’ caused by the limited range of BEVs. Merely predicting the range based on the state of charge of the battery, the average driving speed, and the average power consumption is inadequate. This paper proposes a new range estimator, the dynamic range estimator, which also takes into account the driving behavior, in addition to the slopes of the trip for its energy estimation. The driving behavior is obtained based on the response to speed error and the time delay between throttle pedal and brake pedal switching. In this way, the driving behavior is a fixed response for any driving speeds on the same route thus, allowing the energy consumption to be compared for different speeds.

Keywords

• Matlab–Simulink
• Distance estimator
• Battery electric vehicle
• Vehicle dynamics
• Range anxiety
• Driving behavior