Torque allocation in electric vehicles with in-wheel motors: A performance-oriented approach

The coordinated control of vehicle actuators is gaining more importance as new platforms are becoming available, with chassis endowed with many different actuators that may help controlling the vehicle motion. Further, in-wheel motors (IWMs) allow using a single system to apply both positive and negative torques at the wheels, which can be actuated independently one from the other. In electric vehicles (EVs), moreover, such a freedom in the actuation mechanisms opens the way to the combined optimization of performance and energy consumption issues. In this paper, the problem of torque allocation for maximizing the vehicle performance in EVs is addressed. The proposed strategy is compared against a benchmark, a-causal optimal solution showing that only a negligible loss of performance is experienced.