An Adaptive Concept of PMP-Based Control for Saving Operating Costs of Extended-Range Electric Vehicles

The fuel efficiencies of Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) depend heavily on the control concepts, especially on energy management strategies, because the system efficiency of the vehicle is determined by the exploitation of the electric energy. Control concepts based on optimal control theories like Dynamic Programming (DP) or Pontryagin's Minimum Principle (PMP) have been widely studied over the last two decades, and it has been proven that these control concepts provide near-optimal solutions if future driving conditions are given prior to actual driving. However, it is difficult to apply to real vehicles unless the future driving conditions are known. In this paper, a well-known control strategy based on PMP has been developed, which needs only current driving conditions. The significance of the study is that the control concept introduced herein was evaluated in the IEEE VTS Challenge 2018 competition. It produced the best results in terms of the total energy consumption, where 52 controllers had been competing to minimize the energy consumption in unknown driving cycles. Although the control systemwas designed fromtraditional PMP-based control, it becomes a practicable and effective solution by using an adaptive concept for balancing State Of Charge (SOC) of a battery. This study is an extended version of the study presented during IEEE VPPC 2018 and provides the development process of the control concept used in the controller during the IEEE VTS Challenge 2018.