Performance analysis of electric motor drives for electric and hybrid electric vehicle applications

The authors´ recent study has revealed that high speed motors capable of performing extended constant power operation are best suited for electric and hybrid vehicle application. In that study, they showed that vehicle´s operational constraints such as initial acceleration and gradability can be met with minimum power rating if the powertrain can be operated mostly in constant power region. The purpose of this paper is to make a performance analysis of several of the most commonly used motors based on those findings. In this study, the induction motor is found to be best suited for vehicle application. Permanent magnet (PM) motors, owing to their restrictive speed range, are found to be not as suitable for vehicle applications. On the other hand, switched reluctance motors (SRM), despite their poor power factor of operation, may be proven to be superior to both of these motors, both in size and cost. An attempt has also been made to define the standards for some of the vehicle motor design parameters such as motor rated speed, motor maximum speed and extent of constant power operation.