Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 5 (1999), Issue 1, Pages 1-32
doi:10.1155/S1024123X99000976

Optimal recharge and driving strategies for a battery-powered electric vehicle

W. R. Lee, S. Wang, and K. L. Teo

School of Mathematics and Statistics, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U 1987, Perth 6845, Australia

Received 15 October 1998

Copyright © 1999 W. R. Lee et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

A major problem facing battery-powered electric vehicles is in their batteries: weight and charge capacity. Thus, a battery-powered electric vehicle only has a short driving range. To travel for a longer distance, the batteries are required to be recharged frequently. In this paper, we construct a model for a battery-powered electric vehicle, in which driving strategy is to be obtained such that the total travelling time between two locations is minimized. The problem is formulated as an optimization problem with switching times and speed as decision variables. This is an unconventional optimization problem. However, by using the control parametrization enhancing technique (CPET), it is shown that this unconventional optimization is equivalent to a conventional optimal parameter selection problem. Numerical examples are solved using the proposed method.