Scaling Trends of Electric Vehicle Performance: Driving Range, Fuel Economy, Peak Power Output, and Temperature Effect

Abstract

This study investigated scaling trends of commercially available light-duty battery electric vehicles (BEVs) ranging from model year 2011 to 2018. The motivation of this study is to characterize the status of BEV technology with respect to BEV performance parameters to better understand the limitations and potentials of BEV. The raw data was extracted from three main sources: INL (Idaho National Laboratory) website, EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Fuel Economy website, and the websites BEV manufacturers and internet in general. Excellent scaling trends were found between the EPA driving range per full charge of a battery and the battery capacity normalized by vehicle weight. In addition, a relatively strong correlation was found between EPA city fuel economy and vehicle curb weight, while a weak correlation was found between EPA highway fuel economy and vehicle curb weight. An inverse power correlation was found between 0⁻60 mph acceleration time and peak power output from battery divided by vehicle curb weight for 10 BEVs investigated at INL. Tests done on the environmentally controlled chamber chassis dynamometer at INL show that fuel economy drops by 19 ± 5% for the summer driving condition with air conditioner on and 47 ± 7% for the winter driving condition.

Keywords

• driving cycle
• Tesla
• design parameters
• correlation
• ZEV