Automation of Hardware-in-the-Loop and In-the-Vehicle Testing and Validation for Hybrid Electric Vehicles at Ford

Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) test system-based development has been used throughout Ford Motor Company for some time. The development of control strategies for Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) Electronic Control Units (ECU) has benefited from HIL-based testing. It has proven to be an efficient tool for HEV software strategy development, implementation and validation. The Ford HEV HIL system is a very flexible tool able to simulate the whole HEV control system. Ford's HEV HIL system is based on the capabilities of MathWorks tools, dSPACE ControlDesk¹, and ATI Vision² tools and has demonstrated excellent performance. Comprehensive strategy validation is probably the most time consuming and the most routine task for mature vehicle programs. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how this task is automated for HEV programs at Ford Motor Company.