Design And Verification Of Drivability Improving Control For The Ecocar 2 Hybrid Electric Vehicle

Drivability is used to describe the comfort of driving a vehicle under a wide variety of operation conditions like tip-in and tip-out and gear shifting. While the above description of drivability is subjective in nature, automotive companies evaluate the drivability of their vehicle quantitatively using several metrics based on testing. This paper concentrates on the tip-in and tip-out acceleration response part of drivability evaluation and proposes a control architecture consisting of an input shaping feedforward control filter and a feedback controller around an inner disturbance observer loop. A validated model of the Ohio State University EcoCAR 2 hybrid electric vehicle is used in this paper. The proposed controller is tested in both simulations and in experimental road tests and is shown to improve the drive quality of the vehicle significantly.