Influence of the temperature on energy management in battery-ultracapacitor electric vehicles

Energy management strategies for an electric vehicle (EV) with multiple power sources have been widely described in literature. The investigated energy sources are batteries, ultracapacitors, fuel cells, flywheels and solar panels. The management strategy decides how to combine two or more sources in an optimal way. However, the behavior of these sources and also the behavior of the electric drives depend on their temperature. Moreover, the temperature can have extreme values in automotive applications and affect the energy management task. In this paper, to investigate the temperature effect on battery/ultracapacitor powered EV, temperature dependent models are presented for these storage components, as well as for the drive train components itself: power electronics and motor. The average motor iron loss and ultracapacitor loss tend to decrease with increasing temperature, while the average motor copper loss and power electronics loss tend to increase with increasing temperature. These two opposing trends cause the total loss of the drive train to have a rather small variation with temperature for the considered EV and in the considered temperature range. By consequence, the energy management strategy of the EV does not have to depend on the temperature in order to obtain maximal efficiency.