Advanced Integrated Chassis Control for Improved Energy Efficiency and Driving Experience in Electric Vehicle Applications

Complexity of modern ground vehicles grows constantly, since car manufacturers want to provide functionality, while customers are expecting innovation and recent technologies to be integrated into the latest models released to the market. Recent advances in hard- and software opened the gates for new means of vehicle control and operation. Especially the transition to electric propulsion systems and decoupled chassis actuators offer completely new opportunities of dynamics control and manipulation. This paper presents an approach for integrated chassis and vehicle motion control in (battery) electric vehicle applications by using new and innovative controllers as well as mechatronic chassis systems. In several experiments on public roads with a fully instrumented vehicle demonstrator, that features in-wheel based rear-wheel drive and a hybrid brake-by-wire-system, the proposed control is tested under real environmental and traffic conditions with respect to aspects like energy efficiency and driving comfort. The improvements are evaluated by objective performance indicators. In particular, it was found that the controller recovers more kinetic energy during braking maneuvers and lowers driver stress by up to over 90 % fewer mandatory pedal changes compared to already industrialized approaches.