Search Results

Fuel economy and emission regulations for Light-duty Trucks (LDT) are becoming increasingly restrictive year by year. At the same time, Mid-size SUV demands are increasing all over the world. The advancement of Toyota Hybrid System (THS) aims to meet increasingly strict fuel economy regulations and rapidly advance vehicle technologies to meet electrification goals by 2050 (Figure 1). Toyota has been committed to the evolution of hybrid technology starting with the first Prius in 1997 and continues to develop industry leading electrification technologies. The updated hybrid system for the brand-new Highlander was developed to meet worldwide regulations and have competitive class leading fuel economy with an affordable price. This technology is necessary not only to anticipate expanding SUV sales around the world, but to also keep environmental impact to a minimum.

EcoCAR 2 is the premiere North American collegiate automotive competition that challenges 15 North American universities to redesign a 2013 Chevrolet Malibu to decrease the environmental impact of the Malibu while maintaining its performance, safety, and consumer appeal. The EcoCAR 2 project is a three year competition headline sponsored by General Motors and U.S. Department of Energy. In Year 1 of the competition, extensive modeling guided the Colorado State University (CSU) Vehicle Innovation Team (VIT) to choose an all-electric vehicle powertrain architecture with range extending hydrogen fuel cells, to be called the Malibu H2eV. During this year, the CSU VIT followed the EcoCAR 2 Vehicle Design Process (VDP) to develop the H2eV's electric and hydrogen powertrain, energy storage system (ESS), control systems, and auxiliary systems.

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) offer the benefits of both home charging from grid electricity and extended range from fuels. Fuel cell PHEVs in a range-extending (FCEREV) configuration build upon the advantages of PHEV by producing zero emissions while driving. The Colorado State University Vehicle Innovation Team (CSU VIT) successfully designed, built, and demonstrated a FCEREV named ‘H2eV’ for Year Two of the 3-year EcoCAR 2 collegiate competition. The demonstrated FCEREV is based on the 2013 Chevrolet Malibu and features a 15 kW Polymer Electrolyte Membrane fuel cell system, an 18.9 kWh/177 kW Li-Ion battery, and a 145 kW motor for all-electric drive. Operational data was taken during driving on a closed course, following a cycle that approximates the Environmental Protection Agency's 5-cycle test procedure. This paper provides an overview of the CSU VIT's FCEREV and a detailed analysis of vehicle performance during its successful demonstration.

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Plug in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (FCPHEV) offer the potential for zero tailpipe-emission personal transportation with extended range over many battery electric vehicles. As part of the EcoCAR 2 vehicle design competition Colorado State University (CSU) has undergone a complete vehicle design process for a FCPHEV. EcoCAR 2 is a three-year collegiate engineering competition challenging universities in North America to reduce the environmental impacts of a Chevrolet Malibu without compromising performance, safety and consumer acceptability. The detailed design phase is outlined and explained in this paper including component specification, safety, and control. The CSU FCPHEV is intended to serve as a demonstration for how hydrogen and electricity can meet future transportation needs for passenger vehicles.

EcoCAR2 is a three year project in which a 2013 Chevrolet Malibu will be redesigned to reduce emissions and be more energy efficient without sacrificing performance, safety, or consumer appeal. The competition includes 15 universities across North America and is headline sponsored by General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy. Extensive modeling work guided the Colorado State University (CSU) Vehicle Innovation Team (VIT) to choose an all-electric vehicle architecture with a range extending hydrogen fuel cell. The team has followed the EcoCAR2 vehicle design process (VDP) in the development of the powertrain, energy storage, controls, and auxiliary systems. Details on the design process and results for these subsystems and a discussion of the integration challenges are presented.

The design of vehicles, particularly hybrid and other advanced technology vehicles, is typically complex and benefits from systems engineering processes. Vehicle modeling and simulation have become increasingly important system design tools to improve the accuracy, repeatability, and flexibility of the design process. In developing vehicle computational models and simulation, there is an inevitable compromise between the level of detail and the development/computational cost. The tradeoff is specific to the requirements of each vehicle design effort. The assumptions and detail limitations used for vehicle simulations lead to a varying degree of result uncertainty for each design effort. This paper provides a literature review to investigate the state of the art vehicle simulation methods, and quantifies the uncertainty associated with components that are commonly allocated uncertainty.

Vehicular design, especially for hybrid electric vehicles, is multifaceted and necessarily objective oriented. Whether designing for total cost, performance, societal impact, or any other factor there can be a number of possible solutions but limited optimal solutions. While many efforts to achieve particular vehicle characteristics through systems engineering achieve acceptable designs, they are extremely resource consuming and often restricted to utilization of a handful of available components. Design complexity often exists when designers must choose between different vehicle architectures or powertrain characteristics. Evaluating design options equivalently often entails undergoing multiple design iterations to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of selected concepts. Through the use of numerical vehicle modeling, simulation, and optimization many theoretical vehicle configurations can be compared quickly and inexpensively.