Analysis of an inductive charging system for a commercial electric vehicle

The growing awareness that the use of fossil fuels is limited in time and that the growing awareness of the world population about environmental issues have been accelerating the search for environmentally friendly solutions that can contribute to decrease the oil dependency. Considering the world panorama of the transportation sector, mainly their pollutant emissions and oil consumption, different technological challenges must be overcome in the coming years. Under the nowadays context, electric vehicles constitute a promising solution merging several subsystems that do not have standard solutions. One challenge related with electric vehicles is the technical solution of the charging system. This paper addresses this subject by studying the adoption of a less conventional charging system (wireless electrical charging) in a commercial electric vehicle ("Fiat Seicento Elettra"). In a first approach, a "Matlab/Simulink" computational model about this system was developed. The studied model allows computing and analyzing the main impairments of the inductive charging theory, by determining the current and/or voltages, in several points of the circuit. With this method, it is also possible to study the power transfer capabilities of this type of system and its influence on low voltage power grids. The obtained values were evaluated and compared with the requirements of the charging system of the commercial car.