Extended range electric vehicles components preliminary sizing based on real mission profiles

Considering the increasing attention paid by many actors in the automotive field on the hybrid-series/range extender technology, the article proposes a preliminary sizing for the battery pack and the thermal engine in an Extended Range Electric Vehicle. Aiming at carrying out a procedure the most possible “close” to final users´ real life, real world driving data have been used, avoiding standard cycles. The data, collected during a 5 month acquisition campaign on 4 vehicles, have then been used as input to a longitudinal dynamic model of the vehicle. The preliminary sizing procedure has been performed by imposing three main requirements, related to the mean daily travelled distance, the “total-life” battery range and the satisfaction of the worst-case in the acquisition campaign. This last point implied the execution of a cost analysis on different vehicle configurations, going from a pure-electric solution to a “pure fuel” one. The procedure has shown that the battery pack sizing is strictly related to the chosen daily and “total-life” range, while the range extender nominal power is much more related to the worst-case required energy. At last, a simple comparison between the dimensioned vehicle and a gasoline one has been carried out, showing high advantages in terms of CO₂ emissions but low benefits in terms of costs.