Electric HGV traction battery degradation

The SRF will start a new project concerned with developing, testing, and validating a systematic methodology to quantify energy performance of the traction battery system of electric HGVs, with a focus on understanding the causes of battery degradation during in-service fleet operations and modelling their impacts on logistics efficiency and vehicle total cost of ownership (TCO). The work will include:

1) Instrumenting a battery electric HGV with the 'SRF Logger' described in Section and external sensors to measure vehicle response (route, speed), powertrain response (motor rpm & torque, gear selection), driver behaviour (accelerator/brake/cruise positions), battery performance (SoH, SoC, voltage, current, coolant temperature), and environment (weather, road elevation, traffic) from real-world freight operations;

2) Developing a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test rig involving a battery pack for measuring battery pack performance in response to vehicle and battery data measured from 1);

3) Developing, testing, and validating a physics-based, machine-learning-enhanced model of vehicle traction battery system which is capable of quantifying the influence of real-world operational factors on battery performance and health degradation; and

4) Deploying the battery system model developed from 3), combined with a validated vehicle model to evaluate the impacts of various logistics and charging options on battery performance, vehicle operations, and the TCO.