Track: Smart Mobility and Smart Cities

Abstract

This study aims to design a powertrain configuration tailored for specific applications, allowing a reduction of net emissions, investment cost, and operational cost when comparing to its fossil fueled alternative. The methodology is divided into 3 phases: i) Select the specific niche to be electrified whose local conditions ease their social adaptation and monitor their current operation for a long time to determine their driving patterns and operational conditions, ii) Construct a real-world driving cycle based on the typical driving profile of the niche using the Energy Based Micro-Trips method, and iii) Define the vehicle performance metrics to optimize and then based on a multi-objective optimization and an iterative energy-based approach, determine the best electric vehicle’s powertrain configuration (number of batteries, motor size, and gearbox transmission ratio) that optimizes the chosen performance metrics. In this work, a university shuttle service is considered as the case study. Based on a measurement campaign on the normal operation of these buses, a geometrical gearbox and an energy management system have been designed through a multi-objective optimization using an iterative energy-based approach. It was considered Deep-cycle Lead Acid and Lithium Polimer (LiPo) batteries within the design of choice. The best results were observed with LiPo batteries, which shows improvements of the vehicle’s acceleration capacity by 26.5% while at the same time reducing energy consumption by 37%, CO2 emissions by 31%, and the total cost of ownership by 10% when compared to its counterpart diesel buses. Furthermore, it was studied the evolution of the TCO as a function of autonomy under this configuration, and it was obtained that the TCO can be even better to its diesel counterpart under low autonomies (< 160km). In the case of study considered in this work (aka CircuitoTec), each route has approximate distances of 25 km and therefore a range of 50+ km is reasonable. Therefore, for this application, the operation of passenger transport with electric buses is not only feasible, but it is also a better choice.