Electric go-kart with battery-ultracapacitor hybrid energy storage system

An electric go-kart was designed and built. It uses a hybrid energy storage system composed of a battery and an ultracapacitor. To integrate the two energy storage devices, a multiple-input DC-DC converter was used to implement a control strategy that divides the power between them. The main objectives of using ultracapacitors in complement to batteries are: improving performance (i.e. acceleration), increase the system efficiency (including through the use of more regenerative braking) and extend the battery life. This paper presents the design of the electric go-kart and the experimental results obtained with the prototype.