Development of a modular and scalable electric powertrain platform: Powertrain analysis and constituent features definition

Abstract

The new business practices are moving towards a more sustainable future and mobility is one of the most crucial areas to achieve it. Electrification is regarded as the most promising technology to achieve sustainable mobility, but the question is how to offer different solutions to meet different customer requirements with the highest performance, in the shortest development time, and in the most cost-effective way possible. Modularity can drive electrification and provide modular solutions with the necessary foundation to adapt to market trends and customer needs and reduce costs. Therefore, modularity can be the key to achieve the widespread adoption of electric vehicles thus more research is necessary. One of the main questions about modularity today is if a modular system can compete with the current conventional systems concerning capacity, efficiency, and performance. This work is focused on the development of a modular and scalable electric powertrain platform for a heavy-duty truck and it is made up of two main parts. The first part, from a technical point of view, is the powertrain modeling and optimization for a 40 tons capacity truck using various driving cycles and various powertrain topologies to find the one with the highest efficiency and lowest energy consumption and that will be the basis for the platform. The second part, from a more analytical aspect, deals with the analysis of the variance characteristics from the product structure of the electric powertrain to identify critical characteristics and define the main constituent features through a variance sensitivity analysis. With this, it is possible to generate the first approximation of the potential feature structure of the modular electric powertrain kit.