Hardware-in-the-loop simulation of the Toyota Prius hybrid electric powertrain

Abstract

Rising fuel prices over the past years have triggered an increase in the worldwide demand for hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). Moreover, new environment and CO2 emission regulations notably in Europe and Japan have pushed automotive companies to increase the production of HEVs. The success of this technology is mostly due to the increasingly efficient energy management strategies implemented whose goal is to minimize fuel consumption. HEV powertrains are a complex combination of one or more electric machines and an internal combustion engine, and due to the complexity of these systems, their energy management systems must go through extensive testing before getting installed on a prototype vehicle for on-road testing. Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) simulation is a testing process that has proven to be an industry standard for controller testing and validation. This paper proposes an FPGA implementation for the HIL simulation of the second-generation Toyota Prius powertrain. Simulation results show that the developed model meets the timing and resource usage constraints required for controller validation.