Electric vehicle energy consumption estimation for a fleet management system

Accurate estimation of vehicles' energy consumption is a demanding task. It might not be so critical for conventional vehicles because of their high travel range; however, this is something important for electric vehicles (EVs). On the other hand, EVs with less energy on board need more accurate energy management systems. This study focuses on the development of an energy consumption estimation model to be used in an EV fleet management system (FMS). The proposed estimator consists of a vehicle model, a driver model, and terrain models. It is demonstrated that a combination of these three parts can provide an accurate estimation of EV energy consumption on a particular route. As part of this study, a commercially available passenger car is modeled using MATLAB/Simulink. A number of specific routes are selected for EV road testing to be driven for simulation model verification. In the second part of this study, the impact of energy consumption estimation accuracy is investigated at a larger scale for a fleet of EVs. It is quantitatively demonstrated how much sensitive is the performance of a FMS to the accuracy of the energy estimator. Simulation results have shown that the total energy consumption of an EV fleet is decreased significantly by improving the estimation accuracy. It is also demonstrated how the uncertainties in EV energy consumption estimation limit the overall performance of a FMS.