Guest Editorial: Special Section on Information and Control Technologies in the Electrification of Transportation

E CONOMIC and environmental incentives, as well as advances in information and control technologies, are reshaping the traditional view of transportation systems. The emergence of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) has shown that electrification is a clear trend to improve performance, efficiency, and sustainability of transportation systems since electricity is becoming cleaner, greener, and more affordable through the introduction of renewable sources. With the introduction of advanced electric vehicles (EVs) into the transportation systems, there is an in-depth need to address the potential communication and control challenges posed by the penetration of these vehicles to the electricity grid, maintaining battery performance and managing the interaction between the battery and combustion engine in HEVs. Currently, the electrifica-tion of transportation is increasingly taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by advancement of information and control technologies to offer new and original functions and solutions. This Special Section on " Information and Control Technologies in the Electrification of Transportation " is focused on the development, adoption, and application of information and control technologies for transportation electrification. Topics that were announced to be addressed in this section included, but were not limited to, the following research areas and technologies: 1) information and control technologies for PHEVs and PEVs; 2) vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-home (V2H) interface, communication, and applications; 3) energy management systems for controlling the charging process of plug-in vehicles; 4) charge/depletion control for hybrid plug-in vehicles; 5) energy/battery management systems ; 6) charging stations; level I, II, and III charging; wireless charging; fast and opportunity charging; 7) energy storage; hybrid battery/ultra-capacitor energy storage systems (ESSs); 8) network integration in transportation systems (heterogeneous networks and wired/wireless); 9) mass transit/public transportation electrification: standards; modeling, and simulations; 10) vehicle-grid communication and control; 11) security, reliability, and availability of electrified transportation systems. We received many papers from different research groups and variety of perspectives for this section. After a thorough evaluation of the papers by reviewers, the editorial board chose seven papers to appear in this section. These papers, as will be explained in more details in the following, are well-written representatives of the state-of-the-art information and control technologies in the area. First, the large-scale integration of EVs has potential challenges and benefits for the grid. On one hand, it may increase the peak demand and destabilize the grid. On the other hand, the grid can actually benefit from the EVs by treating …