A simulation-based concept design approach for combustion engine and battery electric vehicles

The early concept design of a vehicle is becoming increasingly crucial to determine the success of a car. Broadening market competition, more stringent regulations and fast technological changes require a prompt response from carmakers, and computer-aided engineering has emerged in recent years as the promising way to provide more efficient and cost-effective design and to cut development time and costs. The work presented in this paper shows an approach based on computer-aided engineering to determine vehicle’s energy consumption and performance. The different vehicle’s subsystem are first analyzed separately by using dedicated simulation tools and then integrated to obtain the entire vehicle. The work covers a wide range of vehicle layouts. Internal combustion engine vehicles and battery electric vehicles are considered and various transmission configurations are contemplated with respect to some of the most adopted solutions for these vehicles. The simulation results allow to identify the most effective design variables regarding the combustion engine and the electric motor and to compare the different layouts over various car segments. The results clearly point out that for internal combustion engine vehicles, the combustion engine is the crucial component that defines the vehicle’s characteristics and particularly the energy consumption. Conversely, battery electric vehicles show a more balanced distribution of the losses, and therefore to improve the vehicle’s behavior, different components should be considered in detail. Nevertheless, the choice of the number of electric motors and the transmission choice play a significant role in defining the vehicle performances.