Advanced Battery Management Technologies for Electric Vehicles

8Battery Management Systems in Electric Vehicles

8.1 Background

A battery management system (BMS) is one of the core components in electric vehicles (EVs). It is used to monitor and manage a battery system (or pack) in EVs. The BMS ensures the safety and reliability of the battery system, improves its efficiency, prolongs its service life, and increases the driving range of EVs. Since a single cell has a limited capacity and voltage, a battery system is required to meet the needs of power and driving range of EVs. Generally, the battery system consists of a large number of battery cells connected in series or parallel or a combination of series and parallel. The BMS has a crucial role in managing such a battery system including the estimation of battery states and parameters and the prevention of battery overcharge, over‐discharge, thermal runway, and battery inconsistences.

The rest of this chapter focuses on: (i) the composition and typical hardware of BMSs and their representative commercial products; and (ii) three key points of the next‐generation BMSs: self‐heating management, safety management of battery systems, and the application of cloud computation in BMSs.

8.2 Battery Management Systems

There are five main functions in terms of hardware implementation in BMSs for EVs [1]: (i) battery parameter acquisition; (ii) battery system balancing; (iii) battery information management; (iv) battery thermal management; and (v) battery charge control. Figure 8.1 shows a basic ...