Wheel Power in Urban and Extra-Urban Driving for xEV Design

Electrified powertrains respond to driver demand for vehicle acceleration by producing power through either the electric drive system or an on-board combustion engine or both. In Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles (PHEVs), the powertrain provides the purest form of transportation when responding to driver demand through the electric drive system. We develop a method to size the electric drive system in PHEVs to provide zero emission driving in densely populated urban regions. We use real world data from Europe and calculate instantaneous wheel power during trips. Ray tracing is used to identify the regions where trips occur and the population density of these regions is obtained from an open source dataset published by Eurostat. Regions are categorized by their population density into urban and extra-urban regions. Real world data from these regions is analyzed to determine the wheel power required in urban and extra-urban settings. The wheel power calculated is also represented as a heat map of acceleration vs vehicle speed in urban and extra-urban regions, showing driving behavior differences between the two regions. These results can be directly used to infer battery power requirements, regen power requirements and motor power requirements for the design of electrified powertrains’ electric drive systems.