The capacity of production battery electric vehicles by the industry is steadily increasing. Comparing to conventional fossil-fuel vehicles, battery electric vehicles provide higher energy efficiency and zero emission. However, driving range anxiety is a key factor preventing electric vehicles from being widely adopted by the general public. The driving range of an electric vehicle depends on the vehicle weight, road load conditions, battery capacity, and battery performance. The battery rated capacity and its characteristics could be heavily affected by the ambient temperature. Although it has been well known that driving range is shortened in cold weather, there is not many literatures in quantifying the impacts of ambient temperature on the battery electric vehicle. This paper investigates the effects of ambient temperature on the electric vehicle driving range, equivalent fuel economy, and performance. A production-type battery electric vehicle is modeled and simulated in the AVL-Cruise platform using semi-empirical data. The modeled vehicle battery pack consists of 20Ah Lithium-Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt-Oxide (LiNiMnCoO2) cells. The battery cell fundamental characteristics are experimentally measured, including open-circuit voltages and calculated internal resistances during charging and discharging. The ambient temperatures included -25, 0, 25, and 50 degrees Celsius. The experiments indicate that cell internal resistance increases rapidly as the ambient temperature decreases from 50 to -25 degrees Celsius. The experimental battery cell data is then used to build the battery pack for a production-type electric vehicle model (2018 model-year Nissan Leaf). The simulated driving range and equivalent fuel economy are correlated with the published information as vehicle model validation. Series of simulations on several driving cycles (UDDS, HWFET, US06, and WLTP) with across a broad range of ambient temperatures are conducted to investigate the quantified effects of ambient temperature on driving range, equivalent fuel economy, and vehicle performances. Impacts of air conditioning on the driving range is also studied in the SC03 cycle. The investigations of vehicle performances include maximum acceleration, acceleration time to reach 60 miles per hour (mph), and acceleration time from 40 mph to 60 mph. The simulation results show that vehicle performances almost are not influenced by the ambient temperature. This might be because that current battery model does not consider degradation due to battery aging process. It is known that consistently high ambient temperature accelerates the battery degradation. A degraded battery pack significantly downgrades the vehicle performances while might slightly affect the driving range. This paper provides some quantified assessments of battery electric vehicle driving range and performance.


Ambient Temperature Effects on Battery Electric Vehicle

Division / Sponsors: 
Aerospace, Bioengineering, Applied Mechanics, Design Engineering Division, Advanced Energy Systems, Manufacturing Engineering Division, Noise Control and Acoustics, Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Prognosis (NDPD), Nuclear Engineering Division, Process Industries Division, Fluids Engineering, Heat Transfer, Materials, Microelectromechanical Systems, Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis, Computers & Information in Engineering


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2020/volume/84478

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