Monitoring and testing of an electric vehicle with 2 in-wheel motors: Variable dynamic behaviour and control

Abstract

CIDAUT Foundation is a Spanish non-profit Research and Development Centre for Transport and Energy. One of CIDAUT's current lines of work is sustainable mobility, involving the electric vehicle and its infrastructure. In order to advance in this direction CIDAUT has designed and manufactured a technological demonstrator consisting of an electric vehicle. This vehicle is been used to test different power train configurations, batteries technologies, electronics, and specially dynamics behaviour and control algorithms. The constructive solution chosen is 2 rear in-wheel motors as one of the most versatile configurations. CIDAUT has developed mathematical models to reproduce the dynamic behaviour of such vehicles. These models allow full control of the dynamic behaviour while simulating different control algorithms in order to improve active safety and maintain "fun to drive" (based on the control parameters of the inwheel motors). CIDAUT's technological demonstrator has been used to validate those models and control algorithms. The three basic configurations used in the experiments are no control, low speed control and high speed control. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011.