This paper details the vehicle testing activities performed during the Year 4 of the EcoCAR 3 competition by the Wayne State University team on a Pre-Transmission Parallel PHEV. The paper focuses on two main testing platforms: the chassis dynamometer and the closed-course track (on-road). The focus of the former is to evaluate the emissions and energy consumption associated with different driving scenarios, while the latter has been used to assess the vehicle performance and their impact on the consumer appeal. The paper presents the objectives of each test, the setup accomplished for the different vehicle testing platforms, the results obtained and the comparison with the values expected from simulations. In addition, the impact of the results on the refinement of the control strategies and on the validation of the simulation models are discussed.
The EcoCAR 3 competition challenges sixteen North American universities to re-engineer a 2016 Chevrolet Camaro to reduce its environmental impact without compromising performance and consumer acceptability.
Over the course of Year 4 the Control and Modeling and Simulation team used various simulation platforms to test the control algorithms designed for each operational mode of the vehicle. While Model-in-the-Loop (MIL) and Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) environments have been the main focus of Year 2 and Year 3, during this last competition year a considerable amount of time has been spent on chassis dynamometer and closed-course vehicle testing. The control strategies have been tested over a variety of drive cycles to identify the need for refinements and improve the robustness of the algorithms. In addition, the results obtained have been used to validate the components plant model and to support further development of the operational strategies within the non-vehicle platforms.