Case Study on Gasoline Electric Range Extender as a Powertrain Solution for Small Commercial Goods and Passenger Carrier Vehicles in India 2021-26-0158

Climate change is a global phenomenon now and countries across the globe are working towards reducing emissions by bringing in stricter legislations on emissions and CO₂. India is also facing huge challenges on pollutions in large cities. Reports suggest that 7 of the 10 most polluted cities of the world lie in India. The growing public opinion towards cleaner air and reduced greenhouse gaseous emissions has sensitized the matter and has led to drafting of strict emission legislations in India during the past few years. The leap frogging from BS 4 to BS 6 in 2020 by skipping BS 5 norms showed the intent of the GOI towards emission reduction. The BS 6 legislation is not limiting to meeting norms with legislative emission cycle but will also focus from year 2023 onto real driving emissions on actual roads. GOI is also proposing to implement fleet CO₂ emission norms (CAFÉ) by 2022 to regulate the CO₂ emissions. With these stricter norms coming into place in India, the automotive industry has started to focus on hybridization and electrification of its fleet as a solution.

SCV are major back bone of commutation in Indian cities, providing the last mile connectivity of people and goods. The market share of SCV’s is approximately 50% of the total commercial vehicle sales in India and operate inside all big and small Indian cities. Predominantly this segment is powered by Diesel engines. Migration towards Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) for this market segment will bring a big change in the vehicular pollution levels in these cities. Electrification potential of this segment is driven by parameters like total cost of ownership, charging infrastructure and driving range [1]. Regarding the vehicle cost reduction, the GOI is working on bringing newer legislations like FAME to subsidies BEV’s. GOI and the automotive industry is also collaborating towards improving the battery charging infrastructures as well. Other challenge on the driving range of BEV’s still remains a major challenge for the automotive industry.

BEV with Range Extenders as a solution towards an increased total operational driving range and lower operational cost is the main focus of this study. REEV architecture eliminates the use of large battery pack used in BEV needed to achieve higher driving range. The study uses the most selling SCV from the Indian market as donor vehicle. Typical driving range of SCV’s has been studied in Pune city for various applications like transportation of goods & passenger the city and transportation of goods between two nearby cities. For such an application where driving range various on a day to day basis for a user, REEV architecture is more efficient due to use of smaller battery pack leading to lower vehicle weight and reduced cost. A small Gasoline engine operating as a range extender was used in the proposed REEV architecture because of its higher efficiencies compare to the conventional Gasoline engines. Additionally use of Gasoline engine also avoids sophisticated exhaust after-treatment system like DPF, LNT/SCR for emission control on Diesel engine needed for meeting BS 6 legislation, thus reducing the overall vehicle cost. The study evaluates BEV & REEV layout using cyclic vehicle simulations on FEV developed Matlab/Simulink based toolchain targeting the right sizing of the E-machine and battery pack, there by evaluating the energy efficiency of the REEV layout.