Hybridization kit for light commercial vehicles using a fault-tolerant electrical drive

The increase of the number of electric machines and drives in automotive applications leads to enhance the overall functionality and efficiency of the vehicles but it determines reliability problems. Hence, the automotive industry is moving towards the introduction of fault-tolerance capability in those components involving safety issues. This paper describes the design concept and prototyping of an electrical drive for auxiliary services based on fault-tolerance concept. The system is designed to be included in a plug-in kit for the hybridization of light commercial vehicles used for the last mile transportation in urban areas. The architecture adopted for both the electrical machine and the power converter is presented and some experimental results achieved on a drive prototype are reported.