Approach
The benchmark vehicle was put through a series of test cycles at HORIBA MIRA’s facility in China to establish its baseline AER. Additionally, once shipped to the UK, climatic wind tunnel testing was used to investigate its thermal performance, while characterising components such as the battery, e-motor, and inverter.
Comprehensive digital analysis was carried out using a whole vehicle model to understand the system’s total energy usage. The same model was then employed to optimise the powertrain, looking at factors such as thermal management, lift-off regeneration and the implementation of a brake-by-wire system. Meanwhile, HORIBA MIRA’s Advanced Battery Development Suite (ABDS) was used to understand cell and pack-level behaviour, enabling the engineers to replace the battery pack and optimise the usable energy.
Once both systems were optimised, a physical prototype using only the customer’s parts was built to validate the results. This required significant reverse engineering on the donor vehicle to achieve a significantly increased level of performance.
Successes and benefits
The energy optimisation work carried out by HORIBA MIRA resulted in significant improvements to the vehicle’s range and efficiency. These included:
- Simulated gains of +36.8% AER and -19.5% in energy consumption for a fully-optimised solution using all possible identified improvements
- Physical prototype demonstrated real-world increase of 21.3% AER without further physical changes other than new powertrain and control system optimisation
- Donor vehicle sourced. Powertrain reverse engineered and removed
- Prototype vehicle reverse engineered, developed, built, and verified with optimised powertrain
HORIBA MIRA has the resources and the experience to carry out projects like this entirely in-house. We were able to provide all the services required to integrate a new e-axle and optimiseits functionality.
Ben Gale, Solution Leader for Automotive Energy Efficiency
HORIBA MIRA
