Evaluations and Improvement of Ride Comfort Performance of Electric Vehicle Conversion

This paper present a study on ride comfort performance of passenger vehicle converted into an electric vehicle. The studies involved evaluations on the vehicle’s ride comfort performance before and after the conversion, as well as possible ride comfort performance improvements by the magnetorheological semi active suspension system. The studies used 7 degrees of freedom of vehicle’s ride model which were validated experimentally. The data of Malaysian made passenger vehicle were used in this study assuming that the vehicle is going to be converted into an electric vehicle. Ride test known as pitch mode tests were conducted to validate the reliability of the developed simulation model. The validated simulation model was used to evaluate the vehicle ride comfort performance when converted into an electric vehicle. The validated simulation model was also integrated with the semi active suspension system in order to improve the EV conversion ride comfort performance. It was found that the EV conversion’s ride comfort was not significantly affected from the modifications and the application of semi active suspension system can be an alternative in further improving the EV conversion’s ride comfort performance.