Power Electronics and Electric Drives for Traction Applications

7 Electric and hybrid vehicles

David Garrido and Gonzalo Abad

7.1 Introduction

This chapter introduces the reader to the main characteristics of electric and hybrid vehicles. These vehicles are propelled by electric motors, sometimes in combination with combustion engines, and draw their power from onboard energy sources.

Pure electric vehicles appear to have advantages over those powered by the internal combustion engine. They do not release pollutants at their point of use, they are quiet, the infrastructure needed for their implementation can be achieved using the existing one, the motors exhibit high‐efficiency performance, and they can recover the kinetic energy by means of regenerative braking. On the other hand, limited range and charging times present major disadvantages for these vehicles users.

This chapter focuses on the physical laws acting on these road vehicles, on the different vehicle configurations, and on the pure electric vehicle and hybrid vehicle configurations and the subsystems that integrate them. Finally, battery management systems, some computer‐based simulations, design examples, and future trends are presented and described.

7.2 Physical approach to the electric vehicle: Dynamic model

This section describes a longitudinal model of a road vehicle. The vehicle is modeled by its corresponding dynamic differential equations, which are derived from the physical laws describing its movement. Only longitudinal movement along a line is modeled, we ...