Cost and efficiency analysis of different powertrain architectures for fuel cell electric vehicles

Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles are becoming more and more important for the future of mobility, in particular for long trips. The efficiency and the performances of the vehicles are fundamental for the development of this technology. In this paper, three fuel cell vehicles electrical architectures are compared in terms of efficiency, performances and costs. The three analysed architectures differ for the number and position of dc/dc converters used to connect battery and fuel cell to the dc bus. To perform the comparison, powertrain components of the three vehicles have been properly sized, a model has been built in Simulink and the worldwide harmonized light vehicle test procedure cycle has been used as a reference cycle for the simulations. The developed model is then used to compare the same architecture for three different dc bus voltages.