Optimal Motion Control for Energy-aware Electric Vehicles

We study two problems of optimally controlling how to accelerate and decelerate a non-ideal energy-aware electric vehicle so as to (a) maximize its cruising range and (b) minimize the traveling time to a specified destination under a limited battery constraint. Modeling an electric vehicle as a dynamic system, we adopt an Electric Vehicle Power Consumption Model (EVPCM) and formulate two respective optimal motion control problems. Although the full solutions can only be obtained numerically, we propose approximate controller structures such that the original optimal control problems are transformed into nonlinear parametric optimization problems, which are much easier to solve. Numerical examples illustrate the solution structures and support their accuracy.