Challenges to develop a range monitor for all-electric vehicles

Considering the rapid market development of all-electric vehicles, on-board diagnostics is facing new challenges. Up to now, OBD has focused on emission-relevant system functionalities. This study deals with the further development for battery electric vehicles, focusing on the detection of range impacts and the related cause classification (pinpointing). As there are currently no technical regulations regarding range monitoring, technical challenges as well as possible solution concepts are discussed. In the conceptual design and development of the range monitor, three focal points were defined: which components lead to a range impact, which framework conditions affects the error detection and what is a possible solution for this error. The challenges of the energy management of a battery electric vehicle lie in the multitude of operating states and the complexity of the required thermal management for passenger cell, battery temperature control and individual system components. Environmental influences such as weather, ambient temperature as well as the stored residual energy of the battery cells are strong influencing parameters on the system dynamics. This should not falsely result in an error message. The lecture illuminates the chosen methods and gives a functional overview in which artificial intelligence and classical data analysis play a role. No extra sensors are used to assess the system status. In this way, the energy efficiency of the battery-electric vehicle can be ensured over its service life. The future use of such AI-supported OBD can make a significant contribution to maximize the range and early fault detection of battery electric vehicles.