Trade-off design method of electric car targeting to Chinese consumers

Developing electric vehicles (EVs) has been chosen as national strategy as solution to energy security and urban air pollution by China. China has invested much to develop electric vehicle technologies. For EVs´ penetration, China government develop `ten-city one thousand-EVs´ demonstration program in 25 cities from 2008. For mass penetration of EVs, there still exist many challenges, especially for electric car for private use. How to promote EVs application based on present electric powertrain technologies has become an urgent demand for China government. Targeting to propose a kind of comprehensive trade-off method and to get the optimized powertrain parameters, such as battery capacity, in this paper, the simulation models were setup in Matlab/Simulink. The energy consumption model was setup, and based on that model, electricity consumption efficiency of electric sedan under NEDC and China city passenger car driving cycle were analyzed and compared. Based on energy consumption of a conventional reference car and a BEV, a comprehensive trade-off method for the average car user is proposed targeting to China market. The method takes into account the traction battery technology status and forecasting, vehicle daily kilometers travel, operating duty cycle, purchase price, fixed annual costs and operating costs, policy of EVs, etc. By the analysis, it can be concluded that A-compact type BEV, the AER designed sweet region should be no more than 200km under weight constrain. With higher battery capacities the amortization time becomes significantly longer, but from the systematic view, it is the less economical. Based on above analysis, the most cost-benefit designed AER with 50km VKDT should be 80km from view of minimum TCO of life cycle. So the optimized installed battery capacity threshold based on China VKDT is highly recommended. And the subsidy policy for EV should be modified more reasonable.