Trade-off between PHEV fuel efficiency and estimated battery cycle life with cost analysis

The battery life and cost of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are two key factors that impede the introduction of PHEVs in the current market. For a given drive pattern, battery cycle life has an inverse relationship with battery utilization, and gasoline savings (petroleum displacement) has a direct correlation with battery utilization. This paper attempts to determine the trade-off between battery cycle life and gasoline fuel savings by varying the battery utilization for a fixed distance and drive pattern. By varying the vehicle energy management, different battery utilization scenarios are created. Battery hardware-in-the-loop (a real battery tested in a virtual vehicle) is used to evaluate battery utilization under different vehicle energy management scenarios. The virtual vehicle is a real-time simulation of a power-split midsize vehicle, developed by using Argonne´s Powertrain Simulation Analysis Toolkit (PSAT). The real battery is the JCS VL41M 10-kWH lithium-ion PHEV battery. Cost analysis provides insights into the economic impact of the above trade-off.