Performance evaluation and tuning of a fuzzy control strategy for a fuel cell hybrid electric auto rickshaw

One of the most important factors that determine the performance of hybrid vehicles is the energy management and power distribution between the different energy sources. This paper reports on a project whose objective is to examine the potential and compare the performance of intelligent control strategies as applied to a fuel cell/battery hybrid electric auto rickshaw. A previous study found that a novel fuel cell load following strategy (FCLS) showed better results when compared to an equivalent consumption minimization strategy. In this paper, a fuzzy control strategy (FCS) is benchmarked against FCLS using a realistic drive cycle. It was found that after careful tuning, FCLS and FCS were equivalent in terms of achievable fuel economy.