Design of an embedded hardware for motor control of a high performance electric vehicle

In current automotive applications, novel and robust communication technologies have been used to optimize some features related to security, fuel consumption and user interface. However, the automotive communication protocols present two problems: 1. the connections between devices are very complex and their maintenance is difficult, and 2. most of the commercial devices, specialized to send data between devices, use proprietary software to perform operations inside the vehicle. In this work, a novel embedded platform was designed to measure and control the speed and torque of electric motors of a 200 kW electric vehicle. It is a versatile, modular and open-source design, which exchanges data with each motor using the CAN Bus protocol to control their speed. Also, the implementation and maintenance of the proposed platform becomes simpler. The proposed platform was built and tested with the devices that are used inside the car.