Use of supercapacitors to enhance the lifetime and efficiency of road vehicle batteries

The work presented here originates from the participation in the sixth edition of the IEEE VTS Motor Vehicles challenge, which dealt with the design of a hybrid dual energy storage system on board of an electric vehicle - a solution expected to improve their overall lifetime and efficiency. In particular, contenders were required to size the battery cells and supercapacitor modules installed in the vehicle properly and implement an energy management system to control them to minimize specific desiderata. This paper outlines three strategies proposed for the challenge and describes their effects on particular variables of interest, such as battery current and supercapacitor pack voltage.