Gear ratio optimization and shift control of 2-speed I-AMT in electric vehicle

•I-AMT, a high-efficient 2-speed transmission, is proposed for pure electric vehicle.•Gear ratio optimization using dynamic programming is carried out for I-AMT.•Shift control without torque hole is proposed, and clutch friction loss is studied.

Connecting a 2-speed transmission with the drive motor improves the dynamic and economic performance of electric passenger vehicles. A novel 2-speed I-AMT (Inverse Automated Manual Transmission) is studied, and the dry clutch is located at the rear of the transmission so that the traction interruption of traditional AMT can be cancelled. After the gear ratios are optimized using Dynamic Programming, gear shift control is addressed, and smooth shift process without torque hole is achieved through feed-forward and feed-back control of the clutch and the motor. Finally the proposed electric vehicle (EV) is compared with an EV with fixed-ratio gear box, and it is shown that the 2-speed AMT with a rear-mounted dry clutch has much better performance in terms of acceleration time, maximum speed and energy economy. The effect of clutch friction loss during shifting on the energy efficiency of the whole driving range is analyzed as well.