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ADvancing user acceptance of general purpose hybridized Vehicles by Improved Cost and Efficiency

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ADVICE (ADvancing user acceptance of general purpose hybridized Vehicles by Improved Cost and Efficiency)

Reporting period: 2018-10-01 to 2020-09-30

fig.0

Hybridisation of vehicles is considered to contribute to the European climate goals. However the price of these vehicles still is an obstacle on the way to further increase the number of these vehicles (either, full hybrid (HEV) or plug-in-hybrid (P-HEV)) on the road.
The overarching long-time target is to increase the number of hybrid vehicles on the roads and thus contributing to the European CO2 targets.
This will be achieved by focusing on a market segment called „premium class„. This segment is facing problems in reaching the more and more severe European CO2 targets, when running on fossil fuel only, not the least due to the considerable vehicle weight.
In ADVICE we wanted to cover different widely used hybrid architectures ranging from mild-hybrid over full-hybrid to plug-in hybrid, taking advantage of exploiting the possibility to downsize the internal combustion engines.

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The cost the target was to achieve in production volumes a cost premium of 5% for mild and full hybrid and 15% for P-HEV compared to best- in- class non-hybrid diesel vehicles available on the market
Another important selling argument for the vehicle class under consideration is the vehicle performance and fun to drive
For this reason a cost assessment procedure was set up to take into account total cost of ownership (not only the purchasing price) and a cost benefit analysis.
A reduction of fuel consumption by 20% and 25% increase in electric driving range for plug-in-hybrids, while reducing the vehicles’ noxious emissions – at a price competitive to conventional vehicles.
To get down the emissions, optimized aftertreatment with electrically preheated catalysts and engine strategies in hybrid mode are exploited

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For the HEV demonstrator a high power battery with a new cooling concept and laser welding technologies from Fraunhofer ILT was developedby FEV on the basis of the Volvo cars requirements showing high potential to be implemented in a modular way in different platforms.

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The 48V motor and battery pack by AVL was integrated in the P4 e-axle of the 48V demonstrator

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For drive performance and efficiency a solution based on the GKN e-Twinster architecture has been evaluated with following advantages:
- The system offers up to 80% of the electric drive torque to improve the acceleration and lateral dynamics of the vehicle with the torque vectoring. The critical speed (the maximum speed at which the test can be performed successfully) is increased by 8.3% thanks to the implemented torque vectoring system
- regenerative braking increases the powertrain efficiency

At Virtual Vehicle Research we examined the impact of a heat storage unit with 3 kg paraffin, validating the characteristics on the testbed and assessing it on vehicle level via simulation

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The experiments by simulation show that the integration of a heat storage into either the high temperature or the low temperature coolant circuit proves to be beneficial in several ways. Results predict that for the high temperature cooling circuit the heat storage can contribute by reducing heat up time of the combustion engine. This in return leads to a reduction of tailpipe emissions.

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And to a significant reduction of the heat-up time for the battery.

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Co-simulation played an important role to optimize and assess innovations on component and system level. And to demonstrate the potentials of predictive controls

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ECO routing – which is finding the most energy efficient route is more complex for hybrid systems than for conventional vehicles of fully electric vehicles since hybrid vehicle offer more degrees of freedom.
ECO driving requires a validated model of the vehicle and its components to guide the driver towards the best way how to drive the ECO-route

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An HMI (human machine interface) app has been implemented that can be used on an Android smartphone (details can be found in the newsletters).

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The EHC (electrically heated catalyst) is pointed as an effective method to decrease HC and CO emissions of cold start conditions, especially for mild HEV. The heater device should be integrated with a catalyst to heat up the catalyst directly rather than heat up the exhaust to decrease the heating thermal losses. Thanks to the interaction with Infineon Technologies, it has been possible to evaluate a new SoC (system on chip), which integrates most of the functionalities needed.

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We have finished our evaluation of performance, emissions and energy consumption on testbed and under real driving conditions – partly assisted with our validated simulation environment
Below can see 2 different routes that have been chosen to validate the vehicles under real driving situations


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ECO routing was evaluated along 2 different routes in Aachen (we have compared the fastest route resulting from typical navigation systems versus the most energy efficient route) resulting in a significant reduction in fuel consumption

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We have evaluated our demonstrators comparing WLTC (Worldwide harmonized Light vehicles Test Cycle) versus real driving results taken at the routes in Spain shown before.
In case of the HEV demonstrator the calibration of the vehicle could not be optimized due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, but the involved partners are sure that based on the evaluation result the target can easily be achieved after calibration.
The efficiency and the fuel consumption of the P-HEV demonstrator have been much better than the target.
For the noxious emissions all the targets with respect to EURO 6d could be achieved.

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For evaluating the cost target we have compared the retail price, the total cost of ownership and made a cost benefit analysis, where efficiency, emissions and performance resulting from the tests have been considered
The evaluation was made against best in class diesel vehicles on the market.
The cost assessed for all vehicles is in-line with the targets.


Dissemination:

• 18 international conference papers in 10 different countries
• 6 journal papers
• 2 dissertations
• 7 patents within the project duration.

Additionally,
• 11 events
• 4 webinars
• 1 promotion video with results and 3 vehicle demonstrators were organized to give different audiences the chance to get “a glimpse behind the scenes” and to see the results of the project.
The long-term impact, which is a 10% increase of hybridized vehicles on the road by meeting all project targets seems achievable.
Furthermore the above mentioned achievements on component and system level will likely be seen in different platforms in the mid-term future.
fig.0: ADVICE logo
fig.13: ECO routing vs. conventional routing
fig.5: PCM device
fig.11: electrically heated catalyst
fig.2: demo vehicles
fig.4: 48V components
fig.10: HMI
fig.3: HEV battery
fig. 6: PCM engine warm up
fig.8: co-simulation environment
fig.14: summary of evaluation results
fig.9: ECO routing/ ECO driving
fig.7: PCM battery warm up
fig.1: hybrid architectures
fig.12: routes for real driving assessement