Abstract
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In this paper, two types of increasingly more efficient and greener vehicles
are analyzed and compared. These vehicles are: a proposed conceptual seriesparallel
powertrain, the University of Technology, Sydney plug-in hybrid electric
vehicle (UTS PREY); and, a conventional series-parallel hybrid electric vehicle
with an internal combustion engine .. The UTS PREY requires only a single electric
machine to function as an electric motor or generator in different time intervals
controlled by a special energy management strategy. The UTS PREV uses
two energy storage devices, the battery and the ultracapacitor, which can work together
effectively to maintain the state of charge at a high level in order to improve
the vehicle drive performance and energy efficiency. With the assistance of
a novel automatic transmission, the UTS PREY can operate under multiple modes
to suit the needs of various driving cycles including those in an emergency. A special
power and energy management strategy was developed to control the power
flows within the vehicle according to the desired operating mode. The overall
structure ofUTS PREY, known as UTS PREY code are derived and implemented
numerically in the MATLAB/SIMULINK environment for further analysis.
Through simulations, the performance of the UTS PREY has been evaluated in
terms of the fuel economy, all electric range (AER), electrical consumption and
operation cost for low and high density traffic patterns drive cycles. The comparison
between the performance and efficiency of the UTS PREY and those obtained
results using existing powertrains are also presented. The obtained results demonstrate
that the UTS PREY outperforms most existing powertrains and has great
potential in applications to passenger cars for city and urban transportations.