Electric vehicle simulator for energy consumption studies in electric mobility systems

Abstract

One of the most important environmental problems in large cities is the vehicular emission. Electric Vehicles (EVs) are a growing alternative for internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Since this kind of vehicle has low autonomy yet, it is important to optimize energy consumption, for instance by planning a suitable infrastructure of battery recharge and/or battery-switch stations. This paper presents an architecture for EV simulation, important to analyze traffic flow, its dynamics and the performance when there are obstructions or intense traffic. There are several tools for traffic simulation, SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility) is one of them. But none of the existing traffic simulators integrates models of EV that allow, for example, perform simulation studies regarding energy consumption. SUMO is a portable open source simulator with multi-modal traffic feature capabilities that permit the simulation of various types of vehicles. This work is an extension of the SUMO, two-dimensional (2D) vehicular simulation package. To allow the simulation of energy consumption of EV, two extensions were incorporated in SUMO: EV models and modeling of altitude, transforming SUMO into a three-dimensional (3D) simulator. The energy model effectiveness and correctness with 3D capabilities has been validated using two driving schedules (Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule and Highway Fuel Economy Driving Schedule). This new tool will also support the study of better routes choice in 3D environment with EV aiming minimum energy consumption.