Evaluation of Available Energy for Regenerative Breaking at the Brazilian Driving Cycle

The purpose of this paper is evaluating the amount of kinetic energy available to be regenerated by a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) undergoing the Brazilian standardized driving cycle. Improvements on energy efficiency of the cars has become an urgent target of the Brazilian industry since Brazil launched a new automotive regulation imposing the reduction of 15.5% on the fuel consumption of the vehicles to be sold in this country in 2017 comparing to 2011. The HEVs are a possible solution for this situation. They are widely known by the high efficiency, mainly the ones capable to make the regenerative breaking, rescuing an already paid energy. Before the launch of HEVs in Brazil, the feasibility of these vehicles has to be accurately studied and one aspect to be evaluated is how much energy is possible to be rescued in the Brazilian standardized driving cycle. In this paper, a longitudinal vehicle dynamic model is implemented using MATLAB/Simulink® in order to demonstrate the energy balance of longitudinal dynamics of a popular Brazilian car subject to the driving cycle cited before, highlighting the energy available for regeneration.