Thermal management consumption and its effect on remaining range estimation of electric vehicles

This paper investigates the significance of thermal management energy consumption on the range of electric vehicles. It is necessary to combine consumption models of powertrain components such as the electric machine, power electronics and high voltage battery that take into account trip-based information containing a predicted speed profile and elevation data with a thermal management system that has the ability to incorporate predicted thermal losses of the powertrain. The thermal management system refers to the sum of all components within the refrigeration cycle of the vehicle as well as the associated control strategy. Based on the results of a real world drive study in an electric vehicle, it is demonstrated, that the range uncertainties introduced by the consumption of the thermal management are significant and should be considered when developing predictive range estimation algorithms. These uncertainties are further investigated by an energy flow based thermal system model. In order to minimize range uncertainties, a system architecture for the prediction of thermal management consumption is proposed.