Hybrid Electric Drivetrain Testing and Design (CRADA CRD-17-00699 Final Report)

Abstract

Hybrid electric drivetrains have recently become of a great interest in the medium and heavy-duty vehicle market as it enables substantial reduction of petroleum use, vehicle level fuel use and criteria pollutant emissions. These vehicle performance improvements are not only economically beneficial for business operations relying on large fleets of vehicles, they are also paramount for curbing energy use and the negative effects of vehicle operations on the environment. Efficient Drivetrains, Inc. (EDI), acquired in July 2018 by Cummins, Inc., is a small company focused on development of medium and heavy-duty hybrid electric drivetrains. EDI has already developed the general hardware architecture of their drivetrain system, but there is still a significant effort to be done on optimizing the system in terms of control strategies and component sizing in order to maximize the benefits of the hybrid drivetrain. Historically, hybrid electric systems have proven to deliver better fuel economy in certain applications than their conventional counterparts. Particular areas of advantageous applications are vocations with kinetically intensive transient duty cycles and operations requiring some sort of power take off whose power demand is not well matched to the size of the vehicle’s main engine, thus forcing it to operate in extremely inefficient operating modes. Hybrid drivetrains can be at a disadvantage when pressed into duty cycle operation consisting of extensive steady state highway cruise due to various design compromises optimized for more transient operation. This can also lead to increase in vehicle emissions if the system is not optimized properly. Ample opportunity for extensive optimization is needed to overcome these obstacles.