Performance Assessment of an Electric Microcar for Various Urban Driving Conditions

Abstract

Increasing traffic congestion in major cities yields to a growing demand to microcars in global automotive market. Due to their easy-to-use characteristics, microcars are seen as convenient transport vehicles for urban districts. Furthermore, more environment-friendly mobility can be achieved with more frequent utilisation of microcars, due to the lower energy consumption values. In the scope of this work, as a part of the conceptual design step of a newly designed urban electric microcar, a case study on driving performance analysis was summarised. In the first part of the study, some essential design features of the microcar were briefly described. In the second part, a performance assessment study of the vehicle was carried out by using Advanced Vehicle Simulator (ADVISOR®), which is a MATLAB®/Simulink® based simulation software for analysis of the performance and fuel economy of various types of vehicles. Therefore, specific drive cycles which were indicated by the standards were utilised for driving simulations. In the final part, results obtained for the miscellaneous urban driving conditions and selected various types of battery applications were presented and evaluated in multiple aspects.