Optimal Thermal Management, Charging, and Eco-Driving of Battery Electric Vehicles

This article addresses optimal battery thermal management, charging, and eco-driving of a battery electric vehicle (BEV) with the goal of improving its grid-to-meter energy efficiency. Thus, an optimization problem is formulated, aiming at finding the optimal trade-off between trip time and charging cost. The formulated problem is then transformed into a hybrid dynamical system, where the dynamics in driving and charging modes are modeled with different functions and with different state and control vectors. Moreover, to improve computational efficiency, we propose modeling the driving dynamics in a spatial domain, where decisions are made along the traveled distance. Charging dynamics are modeled in a temporal domain, where decisions are made along a normalized charging time. The actual charging time is modeled as a scalar variable that is optimized simultaneously with the optimal state and control trajectories, for both charging and driving modes. The performance of the proposed algorithm is assessed over a road with a hilly terrain, where two charging possibilities are considered along the driving route and the battery is soaked to the ambient before departure. According to the results, trip time including driving and charging times, is reduced by $44\%$, compared to a case without active heating/cooling of the battery.