Methodology to Develop a Real World Driving Cycle for Electric Vehicle Simulation Studies

Driving cycles play a significant role in the development, testing, and standardization of electric vehicles. Due to the varying complexity to match the balance between economics of scale and economics of scope in the development of electric vehicle components, the role played by driving cycles in determining lifetime, performance, thermal behavior is highly substantial. Federal Test Procedure 72 (FTP 72), FTP 75, Highway Fuel Economy Test (HWFET), and New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) are a few driving cycles used for emission and range tests for light duty vehicles. This paper discusses a methodology to derive driving cycles from the road load data. A large quantity of data collected from multiple trips are combined and compressed to make a driving cycle that represents the trip characteristics. It is important that the final compressed cycle of short duration should represent the complete data collected from the road. The recorded data were divided into several micro-trips based on the stops. The algorithm then calculates 17 parameters including average speed, maximum speed, average acceleration, and dynamic index for each micro-trip. The candidate micro-trips for final compressed driving cycles are selected comparing the weighted sum of the parameters. Statistical parameters for the collected data are compared and the final driving cycle is created to make sure that it best represents the actual collected data. The driving cycles derived are typically limited to 3600 to 5400 seconds and meticulously customized to cover varied applications of city, highway, and countryside usages. The paper also covers the electric vehicle simulation results of the generated load cycles using a forward-facing simulation model. Test bench-based durability studies with the drive cycle is not included in the paper