Energy Management and Driving Strategy for In-Wheel Motor Electric Ground Vehicles With Terrain Profile Preview

This paper presents a terrain-information- and actuator-efficiency-incorporated energy management and driving strategy (EMDS) for maximizing the travel distance of in-wheel motor, pure electric ground vehicles (EGVs). Minimization of energy consumption for a certain trip with terrain preview based on the operating efficiencies of in-wheel motors and a traffic model is essential to maximize the total travel distances of an EGV. Unlike conducting energy optimization under given vehicle speed profiles that are specified a priori in most literature, the optimally varied vehicle velocity and globally optimal in-wheel motor actuation torque distributions are simultaneously obtained to minimize the EGV energy consumption by employing the dynamic programming method for the first time. As a comparison, CarSim-matlab/Simulink co-simulation results based on a model predictive control design are displayed to not only validate that the energy optimization results from the EMDS design is a benchmark with the least power consumption, but also to show that the driving strategy derived from the EMDS can be potentially utilized as an energy-optimal speed reference for other real-time implementable methods.