Development of a Parallel through the Road Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicle

The University of Washington Advanced Vehicle Works team is currently in the process of designing Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) for the EcoCAR2 Challenge. This competition challenges 15 universities across North America to reduce the environmental impact of a 2013 Chevrolet Malibu without compromising consumer acceptability. The architecture chosen by the team to address these goals is a Parallel Through The Road (PTTR) PHEV which provides all electric operation to displace petroleum usage, four wheel drive mode to improve utility performance for consumers, and effective charge-sustaining operation. The PTTR architecture is the lowest cost architecture to provide all of these benefits, and it does so without compromising safety performance of the platform.

This paper presents the VTS development process, architecture selection process, component selection process and design of a vehicle with particular emphasis on the unique or novel approaches used to solve any design problems.