Novel Areas for Modeling and Simulation in the Automotive Industry - Prediction of Energy Consumption in Electric Vehicles

The introduction of battery electric vehicles (BEV) faces many challenges. For example, limited driving range, long charging time and sparse availability of charging stations lead to range anxiety for many prospective owners. There is a need for vehicle features that help BEV owners plan routes that avoid being stranded due to an empty battery. The key to these tools is the estimation of future energy consumption along different routes and under different driving conditions. How can this be done before sufficient statistical data is accumulated? Even when such vehicles are available it may not be possible to collect sufficient data to get meaningful statistics. This presentation describes a novel approach based on the integration of traffic simulation and propulsion modeling to predict BEV energy consumption.