An Overview of Battery Based Electric Vehicle Technologies With Emphasis on Energy Sources, Their Configuration Topologies and Management Strategies

Vehicle emission is a major cause of pollution leading to life threatening diseases. With rising concern towards healthy living and clean environment, the demand to replace internal combustion engine vehicles is gathering momentum. Hence, currently the focus is shifting towards use of battery based electric vehicles with hybrid energy storage system combining two or more energy sources. The combination of different energy sources brings in the best properties of individual source types resulting in increase of lifetime and efficiency of electric vehicles. Energy management system is the control strategy to distribute energy and power among different energy sources judiciously to improve battery performance. Efficient energy management techniques also help in increasing the electric vehicle’s driving range and reducing battery size. In this paper a comprehensive review of battery based electric vehicle technologies based on energy sources, hybrid energy storage system topologies and energy management systems is presented. A comparative analysis is made about these techniques on the basis of performance indices like average battery current, peak battery current and battery power loss. This paper focuses on the combination of battery and supercapacitor because this combination provides high power and energy density to electric vehicles thereby improving their performance and dynamic power regulation. This review paper summarizes the research work carried out in the field of battery based electric vehicles utilizing the combination of battery and supercapacitor to assist researchers in developing new and sustained technologies in the area.