Design Aspects of an Electric Vehicle Test-bed for Hybrid-Source Three-wheeler Application

Three-wheeled electric vehicles are utilized in the Indian transportation ecosystem as a last-mile connectivity solution. The electrical drive system in these vehicles uses primarily three-phase motors which are powered from a single battery energy storage system. In order to reduce range anxiety, hybrid power sources have been considered for powering these vehicles. A typical arrangement consists of roof-mounted solar panel(s) which act as the secondary power source within the system to provide additional mileage. This paper presents the design aspects of a hybrid source three-wheeler power system considering solar panel and battery as the two sources. The electric vehicle testbed is developed to emulate the on-road behavior of the vehicle using a DC-generator which is mechanically coupled to the drive motor. The dynamic loading on the motor is emulated using a programmable load which is interfaced to the DC generator using a current programmed controlled DC-DC converter. The modeling, design, and analysis of the complete system along with its different sub-systems are presented in the paper.