Analysis of driving cycles effects on power supply requirements of a fuel cell powered light-weight electric vehicle

In this paper, fuel cell powered lightweight vehicles are addressed. A MATLAB/Simulink simulation model including motor, electrical drive, the fuel cell and power electronics systems is implemented. The model is well suited to perform the driving cycle test, which reproduces the speed pattern of an electric vehicle through urban, rural or motorway routes. This paper aims at investigating the most suited driving cycle to design high performances hybrid power supply for electric vehicles in terms of cruising range, cost and size of the power supply equipment. For this purpose, a legislative and a real-world driving cycles are selected. Effects of driving cycles on the power system requirements and size are investigated by the analysis of simulation results. Experimental results on the laboratory prototype are shown to validate the proposed analysis.