Pre-Research Study on HEV Regenerative Braking Energy via Engineering Psychology

Engineering psychology is human factor engineering that is often used in designing vehicles and vehicle systems, especially electric vehicles, including hybrid electric vehicles. Engineering psychology is used in the early stages of the production of a vehicle and is rarely used when the vehicle is in operation, which is the main point where man-machine interaction takes place. While driving a vehicle, the psychological role of a driver changes with the factors of travel distance, time duration, and road terrain, including environmental conditions such as heat, rain, day, and night. The amount of healthy, unhealthy, and mixed braking, as well as braking efficiency and nervousness acceleration, can all be linked to a driver’s psychological level. In HEVs, braking also produces energy that can be used or stored in a high-voltage battery through the regenerative braking system (RBS). Therefore, a pre-research study was carried out to see the trend of the relationship between braking behavior and nervousness acceleration toward renewable energy. This study is an on-road study involving the roads located in Sarawak, Sabah, and Brunei, fully using HEVs in normal driving mode. OBDII equipment and the Hybrid Assistant application are used to transmit and record the resulting data. According to the study’s findings, the energy generated by braking is increasing as the number of braking, the percentage of unhealthy braking, and the nervousness acceleration value increase. This proves that engineering psychology also affects the value of renewable energy, so related research has value, but in a clustering manner.