Development of an Advanced Motor Control System for Electric Vehicles

© 2019 SAE International. All Rights Reserved. Electric vehicles are considered as one of the most popular way to decrease the consumption of petroleum resources and reduce environmental pollutions. Motor control system is one of the most important part of electric vehicles. It includes power supply module, IGBT driver, digital signal processing (DSP) controller, protection adjustment module, and resolver to digital convertor. To implement the control strategies on motor control system, a lot of practical aspects need to be taken into accounts. It includes setup of the initial excitation current, consistency of current between motor and program code, over-modulation, field weakening control, current protection, and so on. In this paper, an induction motor control system for electric vehicles is developed based on DSP. The control strategy is based on the field-oriented control (FOC) and space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM). Speed calculation, over-modulation, field weakening control, PI controller, and fault diagnosis are also applied in this DSP algorithm. As an industry product running on a real electric bus with a 100kW induction motor, communication with vehicle control unit (VCU) by CAN bus, control system safety and PC software designed for lab experiments are also discussed. This paper focused on how to develop the advanced motor control system for electric vehicles for industrial application. The steady-state and transient performances of this motor control system are analyzed by both test-bench experiments and road experiments. Its performance is satisfactory when applied to the real electric vehicle.