Performance Potential of Regenerative Braking Energy Recovery of Autonomous Electric Vehicles

Regenerative braking is an important feature to increase the driving range of electric vehicles (EVs). For an autonomous EV, the deceleration profile and portion of regenerative braking torque can be control variables affecting the regenerative braking energy recovery. To design a control algorithm maximizing the energy recovery, knowledge of the maximum performance of the control system and the optimal control inputs for the maximum performance is very useful. This paper presents how to extract the maximum performance and corresponding optimal control variables for maximizing the energy recovery. As an exemplary application of the extracted optimal solutions, a simple braking strategy was designed and validated in a simulation environment. It outperformed the maximum generation torque strategy that is generally considered as the best strategy for maximizing energy recovery.