Vehicle development process for EcoCAR: The next challenge competition

Present work investigates development of the vehicle design in the Texas Tech University EcoCAR program with industry standard vehicle development process (VDP). The three different architectures considered are fuel cell, GM two-mode hybrid and belt alternator/starter system (BAS+). The design process started from the architecture selection with the use of PSAT software. Based on results, best choice of vehicle architecture among the three considered is two-mode hybrid. With Matlab/Simulink environment vehicle model is developed. The plant model and controller model is tested with software-in-loop (SIL) and hardware-in-loop (HIL) simulations. The testing of this stage is done with NI PXI and dSPACE MicroAutoBox.