Extended Range Electric Vehicle Powertrain Simulation and Comparison with Consideration of Fuel Cell and Metal-air Battery

Abstract

The automotive industry has been in a period of energy transformation from fossil fuels to a clean energy economy due to the economic pressures resulting from the energy crisis and the need for stricter environmental protection policies. Among various clean energy systems are electric vehicles, with lithium-ion batteries have the largest market share because of their stable performance and they are a relatively mature technology. However, two disadvantages limit the development of electric vehicles: charging time and energy density. In order to mitigate these challenges, vehicle Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) have developed different vehicle architectures to extend the vehicle range, including the Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV), Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV), and Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV). In this project, two advanced EREV powertrains have been modeled and simulated by using a lithium-ion battery as the primary energy source, with the combination of a fuel cell (FCV) or zinc-air battery as the range extenders. These two technologies were chosen as potential range extenders because of their high energy density and low life cycle emissions. The objective of this project is to compare the combined energy system (zinc-air and lithium-ion battery, fuel cell and lithium-ion battery) powered vehicles with gasoline powered vehicles (baseline vehicle, ICE engine extended range electric vehicle) and battery electric vehicles (BEV) in dimensions of energy consumption, range, emissions, cost, and customer acceptance. In order to achieve this goal, a unique zinc-air battery model was developed in this work with consideration of research data and current market status, and a control logic of the dual energy systems powertrain was created in the vehicle modeling software. A 2015 Chevrolet Camaro had been chosen as the vehicle architecture platform, with modelling of the five vehicle powertrains being built within Autonomie. This vehicle modeling software, developed by Argonne National Laboratory, runs with MATLAB/Simulink, and contains embedded drive cycles and analysis tools needed to perform the necessary simulations. Since the emission analysis in the Autonomie model only considers the vehicle in energy consumption and tailpipe emissions, therefore a Well-to-Wheel analysis method is introduced to evaluate the energy life cycle. This method takes into account the emissions from the energy production and considers the vehicle tailpipe emission. After finished all the simulations, a decision matrix was developed to compare these five powertrains from the metrics of energy consumption, emissions, customer acceptance, and life cycle cost. Three substantial conclusions were obtained from the comparison: The powertrains without use engine and gasoline as the power source have the lower tailpipe emissions and greenhouse gas emissions. The powertrains based on battery power alone, i.e. metal air extended range electric vehicle (MA-EREV) and battery electric vehicle (BEV) are not able to achieve the total range target, likely because of the relative high vehicle mass caused by the weight of the battery pack. However MA-EREV got the highest marks compared to other powertrains. However, metal-air battery is a new technology, and there are no prototypes of the technology, thus full commercialization is expected to take some time.