The University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team’s participation in EcoCAR: The Next Challenge provided an unparalleled opportunity to execute advanced vehicle technology research with hands on learning and industry leading mentoring from practicing engineers in the automotive industry. This thesis investigates the optimization of the hybrid operating strategy on board the EcoCAR development vehicle. This investigation provides the framework to investigate the pros and cons of different hybrid control strategies, develop the model based design process for controls development in a student team environment and take the learning of this research and apply them to a mule development vehicle. A primary controls development model was created to simulate software controls before releasing to the vehicle level and served as a tool to evaluate and compare control strategies. The optimization routine was not directly compatible with this model and so a compromise was made to develop a simplified vehicle model in the MATLAB environment that would be useful for observing trends but realizing that the accuracy of the results may not be totally consistent with the real world vehicle. These optimization results were then used to create a new control strategy that was simulated in the original vehicle development model. This new control strategy exhibited a 15% gain in fuel economy over the best case from the literature during an Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS) drive cycle. Recommendations for future work include adding charge depletion operation to the simulation test cases and improving the accuracy of the optimization model by removing the simplifications that contributed to faster simulation time. This research has also illustrated the wide variability of drive cycles from the mildly aggressive UDDS cycle having 5 kilowatts average propulsion power to the very aggressive US06 cycle having 19 kilowatts average propulsion power and their impact on the efficiency of a particular control strategy. Understanding how to adapt or tune software for particular drive cycle or driver behaviour may lead to an interesting area of research.

With the emerging nationwide availability of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) at prices attainable for many consumers, electric utilities, system operators, and researchers have been investigating the impact of this new source of electricity demand. The presence of PEVs on the electric grid might offer benefits equivalent to dedicated utility-scale energy storage systems by leveraging vehicles' grid-connected energy storage through vehicle-to-grid (V2G) enabled infrastructure. Existing research, however, has not effectively examined the interactions between PEVs and the electric grid in a V2G system. To address these shortcomings in the literature, longitudinal vehicle travel data are first used to identify patterns in vehicle use. This analysis showed that vehicle use patterns are distinctly different between weekends and weekdays, seasonal interactions between vehicle charging, electric load, and wind generation might be important, and that vehicle charging might increase already high peak summer electric load in Texas. Subsequent simulations of PEV charging were performed, which revealed that unscheduled charging would increase summer peak load in Texas by approximately 1\%, and that uncertainty that arises from unscheduled charging would require only limited increases in frequency regulation procurements. To assess the market potential for the implementation of a V2G system that provides frequency regulation ancillary services, and might be able to provide financial incentives to participating PEV owners, a two-stage stochastic programming formulation of a V2G system operator was created. In addition to assessing the market potential for a V2G system, the model was also designed to determine the effect of the market power of the V2G system operator on prices for frequency regulation, the effect of uncertainty in real-time vehicle availability and state-of-charge on the aggregator's ability to provide regulation services, and the effect of different vehicle characteristics on revenues. Results from this model showed that the V2G system operator could generate revenue from participation in the frequency regulation market in Texas, even when subject to the uncertainty in real-time vehicle use. The model also showed that the V2G system operator would have a significant impact on prices, and thus as the number of PEVs participating in a V2G program in a given region increased, per-vehicle revenues, and thus compensation provided to vehicle owners, would decline dramatically. From these estimated payments to PEV owners, the decision to participate in a V2G program was analyzed. The balance between the estimated payments to PEV owners for participating in a V2G program and the increased probability of being left with a depleted battery as a result of V2G operations indicate that an owner of a range-limited battery electric vehicle (BEV) would probably not be a viable candidate for joining a V2G program, while a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) owner might find a V2G program worthwhile. Even for a PHEV owner, however, compensation for participating in a V2G program will provide limited incentive to join. / text

The University of Waterloo Alternative Fuels Team’s participation in EcoCAR: The Next Challenge provided an unparalleled opportunity to execute advanced vehicle technology research with hands on learning and industry leading mentoring from practicing engineers in the automotive industry. This thesis investigates the optimization of the hybrid operating strategy on board the EcoCAR development vehicle. This investigation provides the framework to investigate the pros and cons of different hybrid control strategies, develop the model based design process for controls development in a student team environment and take the learning of this research and apply them to a mule development vehicle. A primary controls development model was created to simulate software controls before releasing to the vehicle level and served as a tool to evaluate and compare control strategies. The optimization routine was not directly compatible with this model and so a compromise was made to develop a simplified vehicle model in the MATLAB environment that would be useful for observing trends but realizing that the accuracy of the results may not be totally consistent with the real world vehicle. These optimization results were then used to create a new control strategy that was simulated in the original vehicle development model. This new control strategy exhibited a 15% gain in fuel economy over the best case from the literature during an Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS) drive cycle. Recommendations for future work include adding charge depletion operation to the simulation test cases and improving the accuracy of the optimization model by removing the simplifications that contributed to faster simulation time. This research has also illustrated the wide variability of drive cycles from the mildly aggressive UDDS cycle having 5 kilowatts average propulsion power to the very aggressive US06 cycle having 19 kilowatts average propulsion power and their impact on the efficiency of a particular control strategy. Understanding how to adapt or tune software for particular drive cycle or driver behaviour may lead to an interesting area of research.

The requirements on fuel consumption and emissions for passenger cars are getting stricter every year. This has forced the vehicle industry to look for ways to improve the performance of the driveline. With the increasing focus on electrification, a common method is to combine an electrical driveline with a conventional driveline that uses a petrol or diesel engine, thus creating a hybrid electric vehicle. To fully be able to utilise the potential of the driveline in such a vehicle, an efficient energy management strategy is needed. This thesis describes the development of an efficient route-based energy management strategy. Three different optimisation strategies are combined, deterministic dynamic programming, equivalent consumption minimisation strategy and convex optimisation, together with segmentation of the input data. The developed strategy shows a decrease in computational time with up to more than one hundred times compared to a benchmark algorithm. When implemented in Volvo's simulation tool, VSim, substantial fuel savings of up to ten percent is shown compared to a charge-depleting charge-sustain strategy.

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The Swedish car fleet is currently amidst a transition of electrification. This increases the need for an extensive charging infrastructure, and thereby smoothly functioning payment methods for charging. At the time being, there are many charging operators in the market that provide their own payment solutions for charging Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) and Plug-­in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV), as the market has developed without any regulations. In consideration of this problem definition, the possibilities and challenges for developing a common payment system was analyzed. With this aim, three key areas were studied: Firstly, the prerequisites for a common payment system in the market was investigated through the historical evolution of such a system in the banking industry. From this, parallels could be drawn to the current market situation of the BEV and PHEV charging industry. Secondly, the problematization was further researched in regard to the customer perspective of the current payment processes. Finally, the prerequisites for a common payment system was analyzed in regard to a company perspective. The three areas were researched through the following three methods: a literary analysis, a questionnaire and a field study at a company. The results show that a need for a unification of payments is present in heterogeneous markets. Therefore, the BEV and PHEV charging market has adequate preconditions for the development of a common payment system considering the innumerable amount of charging operators that currently exist in the market. Furthermore, the results from the questionnaire showed that a majority of BEV and PHEV users are unsatisfied with the current conformation of the payment processes. Lastly, the results show that in regard to the company perspective, there is a satisfactory market climate for entry of a common payment solution considering the business model and technological solution of the analyzed company as well as the customer need. / I takt med att Sveriges bilflotta elektrifieras ökar även behovet av en utbredd laddinfrastruktur och med det ett smidigt sätt att betala för laddningen. I dagsläget tillhandahåller många laddoperatörer egna betalningslösningar för laddning av el­ och laddhybridbilar då marknadens framväxt skett utan reglering. Utifrån denna problemformulering undersöktes möjligheter och utmaningar för ett gemensamt betalningssystem. Under studiens gång undersöktes i detta syfte tre områden: För det första utforskades förutsättningar för ett gemensamt betalningssystem genom att dra historiska paralleller från utvecklingen av ett sådant system inom bankindustrin. För det andra undersöktes problematiseringen utifrån ett kundperspektiv kring dagens betalningslösningar. Slutligen analyserades förutsättningarna för ett gemensamt betalningssystem ur ett företagsperspektiv. Områdena undersöktes genom följande tre metoder; en litteraturstudie, en enkätstudie och en fältstudie på ett företag. Resultaten visar att ett behov av enhetliga betalningar uppstår i samband med heterogena marknader. Därmed har marknaden för laddning av el­ och laddhybridbilar idag goda förutsättningar för ett gemensamt betalningssystem utifrån den variation av laddoperatörer på dagens marknad. Vidare visade enkätresultaten att en majoritet av el­ och laddhybridbilsägare är missnöjda gällande utformningen av dagens betalningsprocesser. Slutligen visade resultaten ur ett företagsperspektiv att det finns goda förutsättningar för introducering av en gemensam betalningslösning utifrån analys av affärsmodell, teknologisk lösning och kundbehov.

The Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team of Virginia Tech (HEVT) is participating in the 2012-2014 EcoCAR 2: Plugging in to the Future Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition series organized by Argonne National Lab (ANL), and sponsored by General Motors Corporation (GM) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The goals of the competition are to reduce well-to-wheel (WTW) petroleum energy consumption (PEU), WTW greenhouse gas (GHG) and criteria emissions while maintaining vehicle performance, consumer acceptability and safety. Following the EcoCAR 2 Vehicle Development Process (VDP) of designing, building, and refining an advanced technology vehicle over the course of the three year competition using a 2013 Chevrolet Malibu donated by GM as a base vehicle, the selected powertrain is a Series-Parallel Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) with P2 (between engine and transmission) and P4 (rear axle) motors, a lithium-ion battery pack, an internal combustion engine, and an automatic transmission. Development of a charge sustaining control strategy for this vehicle involves coordination of controls for each of the main powertrain components through a distributed control strategy. This distributed control strategy includes component controllers for each individual component and a single supervisory controller responsible for interpreting driver demand and determining component commands to meet the driver demand safely and efficiently. For example, the algorithm accounts for a variety of system operating points and will penalize or reward certain operating points for other conditions. These conditions include but are not limited to rewards for discharging the battery when the state of charge (SOC) is above the target value or penalties for operating points with excessive emissions. Development of diagnostics and remedial actions is an important part of controlling the powertrain safely. In order to validate the control strategy prior to in-vehicle operation, simulations are run against a plant model of the vehicle systems. This plant model can be run in both controller Software- and controller Hardware-In-the-Loop (SIL and HIL) simulations. This paper details the development of the controls for diagnostics, major selection algorithms, and execution of commands and its integration into the Series-Parallel PHEV through the supervisory controller. This paper also covers the plant model development and testing of the control algorithms using controller SIL and HIL methods. This paper details reasons for any changes to the control system, and describes improvements or tradeoffs that had to be made to the control system architecture for the vehicle to run reliably and meet its target specifications. Test results illustrate how changes to the plant model and control code properly affect operation of the control system in the actual vehicle. The VT Malibu is operational and projected to perform well at the final competition. / Master of Science

Ein wichtiger Aspekt bei der Beurteilung und Gegenüberstellung von Fahrzeugantriebskonzepten sind Prognosen zu deren zukünftigen Entwicklung hinsichtlich gesellschaftlicher, ökonomischer und technischer Kriterien. Zukünftige technologische Potenziale von Fahrzeugantriebskonzepten und damit verbundene technologische Begleitaspekte nehmen hierbei eine wichtige Rolle im Rahmen der Antriebskonzipierung der frühen Konzeptphase ein. In dieser Arbeit wird eine in weiten Teilen simulationsbasierte Methodik für die Ermittlung und Analyse entsprechender Potenziale entwickelt. Die Methodik bildet dabei eine Kombination aus Expertenbefragungen und einer Metaanalyse für die Identifikation von Prognosen zu Antriebsstrangkomponenten sowie Verfahren der Modellierung und Simulation für die Ermittlung von Prognosen zu Fahrzeugantriebskonzepten. Die Praxistauglichkeit sowie der Nutzen der Methodik werden anhand von zwei exemplarischen Anwendungen präsentiert. Die erste Anwendung umfasst die Analyse eines beispielhaften PHEVs hinsichtlich der zukünftigen Potenziale im Bereich des Kraftstoffverbrauchs und der rein elektrischen Reichweite. Die zweite Analyse stellt ein exemplarisches BEV und ein FCHEV in Bezug auf die zukünftigen Potenziale hinsichtlich der Reichweite und der Antriebsstrangherstellkosten gegenüber. Darüber hinaus erfolgen in beiden Anwendungen Analysen zu Grenzpotenzialen, technologischen Ursachen, Fehlereinflüssen und weiteren technologischen Fragestellungen.:1 Einleitung 2 Forschungsumfeld, Handlungsbedarf und Vorgehensweise 3 Grundlagen, technischer Stand und Perspektiven der Fahrzeugantriebstechnologien 4 Methodisches Vorgehen und Methodikaufbau 5 Anforderungsspezifische Modellierung im Simulationsmodell 6 Prognosen zu Antriebsstrangkomponenten 7 Systematische Analyse der zukünftigen Potenziale von Antriebskonzepten 8 Anwendung und Ergebnisdiskussion 9 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick A Programmiertechnische Umsetzung B Bewertung von Antriebskonzepten C Datenbasis und Ergebnisse der Methodikanwendung / An important aspect in the assessment and comparison of vehicle powertrain concepts are forecasts with respect to the future development of these concepts regarding societal, economical as well as technological criteria. In this context, future technological potentials of vehicle powertrain concepts and related technological issues and effects play an important role, especially within the early powertrain conception phase. This work presents a mainly simulation-based methodology for the evaluation und analysis of respective technological potentials. The methodology comprises a combination of expert surveys and a meta-analysis for the identification of powertrain component forecasts and methods in the field of modelling and simulation for the evaluation of powertrain concept forecasts. Two exemplary applications are conducted to present the practicability and utility of the methodology. The first one comprises the analysis of an exemplary PHEV regarding its future potentials with respect to the fuel consumption and the purely electric range. Within the second one, an exemplary BEV and an exemplary FCHEV are compared with regard to future range and powertrain costs potentials. In addition to that, within both methodology applications, analyses with respect to technological limits, technological reasons, fault effects and further technological issues are conducted.:1 Einleitung 2 Forschungsumfeld, Handlungsbedarf und Vorgehensweise 3 Grundlagen, technischer Stand und Perspektiven der Fahrzeugantriebstechnologien 4 Methodisches Vorgehen und Methodikaufbau 5 Anforderungsspezifische Modellierung im Simulationsmodell 6 Prognosen zu Antriebsstrangkomponenten 7 Systematische Analyse der zukünftigen Potenziale von Antriebskonzepten 8 Anwendung und Ergebnisdiskussion 9 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick A Programmiertechnische Umsetzung B Bewertung von Antriebskonzepten C Datenbasis und Ergebnisse der Methodikanwendung