Experimental Validation of a Nonlinear Slip Control for 4-Wheel Drive Full Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles are becoming widely adopted; besides environmental advantages, electric power trains present peculiar characteristics that pave the way for reconsidering classical vehicle dynamics control (e.g. ABS, TC) and improving their performance. In this paper, we propose an ABS/TC system for full electric vehicles with 4-wheel drive. The regulator is derived from a nonlinear brake-based slip control. We modelled the wheel dynamics with an augmented single-corner model that includes the transmission, a crucial element. The controller has been tuned in simulation on the identified grey-box model and validated with an instrumented vehicle on ice and snow. It shows good performance relieving the driver of limiting the slips. The wheels are kept controlled and the magnitude of the average acceleration is increased with respect to professional driver performance.