Design of a Power Electronic Drive for a Small Utility Electric Vehicle

Electric transportation is gaining momentum through the adoption of various e-mobility options such as Electric Vehicles (EV) based on Battery, Fuel Cell etc. The selection of a suitable motor with energy efficient power electronic drive is crucial for the EV. The EV drive should provide a smooth operation (less torque pulsation) with minimum losses over a wide range of speed. Fast dynamic response, good steady state response and minimum computational complexity of the control algorithm are also the inevitable requirements of an EV drive. This paper presents design considerations of a drive for a small utility EV intended for an urban driving cycle in India. The urban driving involves frequent and sudden variations in both speed and power, and hence it is recommended to use a high-performance control algorithm. The most popular control algorithms, Indirect Rotor Field Oriented Control (IFOC) based on hysteresis current control (HCC), Sine Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM) and Space Vector PWM (SVPWM) are simulated and analyzed in this paper. IFOC based on SVPWM is found to be the most effective method. The simulation of this project is completed and found to be satisfactory while the hardware is being developed.