A Torque Vectoring Strategy for Improving the Performance of a Rear Wheel Drive Electric Vehicle

This article presents a feedback controller for the torque vectoring control of a rear wheel drive electric vehicle. The main objective of the work presented is to improve the vehicle maneuverability. Distribution of driving/braking torque between left and right wheels allows optimal usage of tire forces which leads to better handling behavior. The controller performance is evaluated by executing steady state and dynamic maneuvers on a multi-body vehicle model. The dynamic maneuvers include numerical simulations around a race track in order to understand the influence of torque vectoring across the complete working range of the tires. Results indicate that torque vectoring control is able to improve the performance of the vehicle in terms of its yaw response and racetrack lap times by better exploitation of the tire forces.