Engineering and environmental consultancy Ricardo has been awarded funding to develop monitoring technology which could prevent electric vehicle battery failures and extend battery life.
The Office of Low Emissions Vehicles (OLEV), in partnership with Innovate UK, has provided £112,000 of funding for the research and development project which aims to improve performance and resilience of EV batteries.
Over six months the project aims to create an advanced monitoring and prognostics service which will reduce EV battery failures. It will develop a test platform to monitor battery health, this will form part of a connected management system which could extend battery life.
According to Ricardo, the first step will be a new data storage method, it will explore techniques for data compression without degrading fidelity.
Ricardo said it will investigate hybrid physics-based and data-driven prognostics algorithms to generate insight into the battery health.
Furthermore, the project aims to derive calibration updates for the battery management system, these can then be applied via software-over-the-air.
The Ricardo research team will develop tools to virtually represent vehicle fleets. These fleets will provide data for the connected battery management system test platform. The date and software flow can then be analysed to enable Ricardo to deliver a service to extend battery capacity and range over service life.
Richard Gordon, Ricardo head of R&D, said: “For a number of years Ricardo’s R&D has delivered technologies which are helping to accelerate the adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles.
“We are confident that this R&D project will prove to be a significant building block in helping vehicle manufacturers leverage simulation, virtual calibration and trusted data sources to improve electric vehicle battery performance, which will reduce long-term warranty costs and build consumer confidence in great electric or hybrid products.”
As previously reported by CiTTi, Ricardo has also recently received funding to create a digital-twin simulator to accelerate the development of electric and hybrid vehicles.
