Design of Drive Cycle for Electric Powertrain Testing

Drive cycles have been the official way to create standardized comparisons of fuel economy and emission levels between vehicles. Since the 1970s these have evolved to be more representative of real-world driving, with today’s standard being the World Harmonized Light Vehicle Testing Procedure. The performance of battery electric vehicles which consist of electric drives, battery, regenerative braking and their management systems may differ when compared to that of vehicles powered by conventional internal combustion engines. However, drive cycles used for evaluating the performance of vehicles, were originally developed for conventional powered vehicles. Moreover, the kinematic parameters that can distinguish the real-world performance of the differently powered vehicles are not fully known. This work aims to investigate the difference between vehicles powered by pure internal combustion engine, electric hybrid and pure electric drive. A route was selected to develop drive cycles with three representative vehicles one for each category and data was collected. Efforts were made for minimizing the effect of traffic flow between vehicles during the experiments. A numerical model of Nissan Leaf, was constructed in GT-Suite software and validated against current standard drive cycles data from the Argonne National Laboratory. Two drive cycles were developed using a micro-trip approach, for intermediate and harsh driving conditions. The results from the novel drive cycles show the inevitable distinctions between differently powered vehicles, giving an estimated range prediction that is very similar to the one from the World Harmonized Light Vehicle Testing Procedure.