Economic and Performance Evaluation of Direct Coupled Motors for Electric Vehicles

Abstract

Because of constant increase in demand on Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) observed during the last decade, electrical machines manufacturers are confronted with technical and economic constraints, such as cost, weight, torque density, and torque ripple. To satisfy these requirements, this study proposes and applies a method for optimal choosing of competitive motors dedicated to the automotive applications. First a literature review is presented on the electric motors applied to drive systems including Synchronous Reluctance Motors with flux barriers (SynRM), Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors (PMSM), Induction Motors (IM) and Switched Reluctance Motors (SRM). Subsequently, several candidates of machines that comfortably handle the exigencies of the propulsion system were analysed. Thus, the result of analyses leads to deal with PMSM and SynRM candidate machines regrading to the selected criteria and their numerical electromagnetic models are proposed and simulated using two-dimensional finite element analysis in order to compare their performance under both technical and economic requirements of the road vehicles market. The results of this study indicate that the SynRM is the optimal choice for challenging moderate-cost, high-performance of EVs and HEVs drives.