Sensitivity Analysis of Environmental Factors for Electric Vehicles Energy Consumption

This paper provides a sensitivity analysis of the required EV propulsion power with respect to environmental factors such as wind speed, rolling resistance and temperature. The results obtained show the degree to which environmental factors affect overall battery power and energy usage for electric transportation. The paper provides analytical expressions as well as simulations to illustrate the key sensitivity results. The significance of our findings for vehicle range estimation is discussed and potential avenues to exploit the strong dependency between propulsion energy and environmental factors are proposed.

I. Introduction

In order to satisfy the urgent demand of implementing sustainable transportation system, the long-term advanced propulsion strategy consists of more and more displacing gasoline and diesel as energy sources for automotive transportation. This will be achieved by a continuously increasing the degree of electrification of the powertrain [1]. Overall, most experts agree that electric vehicles appear to be a promising form of sustainable transportation([1], [2]). The increased use of battery electric vehicles will bring many benefits that include potential independence from oil, reduction of vehicle emissions([3], [4]) and utilization of excess energy from renewable sources [5]. Advances in battery technology([6] [7]) have already put a significant number of electric vehicles on the road.