Electric Vehicle Powertrains

Accelerate the development of electric vehicle powertrains using Model-Based Design and real-time target hardware

Use Simulink^® and Speedgoat hardware to design controls for electric powertrains and their charging infrastructure from electric powertrains and power management systems to DC fast chargers. Typically composed of electric motors, power converters, battery packs, and onboard chargers, electrified powertrains can be found in battery electric vehicles (BEV), hybrid electric vehicles (HEV), fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV), busses, and scooters. Reference models in Powertrain Blockset™, Motor Control Blockset™, and Simscape Electrical™ allow you to get started seamlessly with desktop simulation. Subsequently, use the same models as real-time applications on target hardware for rapid control prototyping (RCP) and later for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing.

Perform automated tuning and automated testing of controls and hardware components with Simulink Control Design™ and Simulink Test™ to ensure that functional, safety and certification requirements are met. Then interface with your hardware with a few clicks. For example, you can configure battery cell emulators, run bus simulations for restbus or direct bus interface using CAN, CAN FD, SENT, or FlexRay, and even configure I/O interfaces to either measure or emulate resolver and encoder sensors. In addition, Speedgoat FPGA solutions can be used for RCP and HIL testing of converters with wide bandgap semiconductors (WBG) like Silicon Carbide (SiC) or Gallium Nitride (GaN), or to emulate nonlinear effects of electric motors based on finite-element method (FEM) look-up tables.

"Speedgoat together with MathWorks products offer us a very efficient workflow to design, test and validate algorithms for our battery management systems: from model design and computer simulations, to code generation and integration, and eventually to actual hardware testing."

Marc Lucea, Senior Application SW Engineer, Leclanché SA

Access various electrical modeling components and reference examples in Simulink^®, Simscape Electrical™, Powertrain Blockset™, and Motor Control Blockset™. Reuse power electronics models from desktop simulation to real-time testing at different levels of fidelity.
Leverage rapid control prototyping on real-time target hardware with scalable I/O to test new powertrain controls and power management strategies.
Real-time execute digital twins of powertrains and motors for automated testing of controllers using hardware-in-the-loop simulations.
Interface high-bandwidth power amplifiers to test power converters and battery packs with all connections and fully powered.

Include motor models with nonlinear saturation or spatial-harmonics from FEM tools from JMAG or ANSYS Maxwell.
Test power converter controllers with switching frequencies up to hundreds of kHz.
Add more FPGAs and I/O modules to your real-time system in order to increase computational power and I/O connectivity as your application grows. The modules can be interlinked using an Aurora high bandwidth, low latency links.
Simulate state-of-the-art wide bandgap semiconductors on FPGAs and reach simulation time steps below one microsecond and a resolution of PWM switching signals as low as 4 nanoseconds.
Leverage Speedgoat target computers for calibration and bypassing applications.


Passenger Vehicles	Trucks	Off-Highway Vehicles	Racecars

Featured Application Use Cases

Electric Vehicle System Design

Leverage Model-Based Design to develop electric powertrains and their associated controllers, including energy management systems. For example, it is important to perform trade-off studies of your architecture and size key components such as the battery pack and traction motor. Later, you can perform HIL testing of your design at system-level to validate safety and performance for normal operation and fault conditions. Furthermore, you can reuse models from Vehicle Dynamics Blockset™, Powertrain Blockset™, Simscape™, and Simscape Electrical™ also for HIL testing. Finally, combine with the Unreal Engine^® from Epic Games^® to combine with 3D scenes.

Frequently Used I/O Interfaces

Simulink Application Resources

Real-Time Simulation and Control of High-Performance All-Electric Autonomous Racing Cars – Reference Application

Electrified Powertrains Development

Develop and test electric powertrain architectures, including electric motors, power converters, energy storage, and mechanical transmissions to meet the system-level requirements. Get started with examples from Powertrain Blockset™, Simscape Driveline™, or Simscape Electrical™. Integrate different electric motors like permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSM), induction motors, or switched reluctance machines. Design and test controllers that adjust to the battery charge and temperature levels. Perform HIL testing of fully electric and hybrid designs, and automate testing of drive cycles under normal and extreme driving conditions.

Frequently Used I/O Interfaces

Simulink Application Resources

Virtual Design of Electrified Powertrain Systems – Webinar
Evaluating Plug-in Series Hybrid Designs for Postal Delivery Vehicles – Technical Article

Electric Motor Emulation and Control

Include electric motors and test controllers with rapid control prototyping. Also, test embedded motor controllers with HIL testing. You can even automatically calibrate and test motor control algorithms such as flux-based calibration to consider battery state-of-charge and voltage level. Or include high-fidelity FEM-based models and look-up tables to include spatial-harmonics and other nonlinear effects during HIL testing. Finally, use electric motor emulators from a few kilowatts to megawatts to test power converters with all electrical connections and fully powered.

Frequently Used I/O Interfaces

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
Encoder Emulator
Resolver Emulator
EGSTON Power Amplifier Interface
D&V Motor Emulator Interface
Programmable FPGAs
Analog and Digital I/O with programmable FPGAs

Simulink Application Resources

Electric Motor Control – Reference Application
Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) Testing of an Electric Motor Controller – Webinar
Electric Vehicle –Reference Application
FEM-Parameterized PMSM – Reference Application

Power Converters Testing and Control

Develop and test power converters for high performance and comfortable driving experience, both DC-DC converters and motor inverters. Use rapid control prototyping to drive power converter controls for wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductors well above the human hearing range up to 1 MHz. Then use hardware-in-the-loop to thoroughly test embedded control units under normal and fault operating conditions. Finally, test the power converters and even motor inverters with all electrical connections and fully powered using high-voltage motor emulators.

Frequently Used I/O Interfaces

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
Encoder Emulator
Resolver Emulator
EGSTON Power Amplifier Interface
D&V Motor Emulator Interface
Programmable FPGAs
Analog and Digital I/O with programmable FPGAs

Simulink Application Resources

Power Electronics HIL Testing Using Simscape to HDL Conversion – Webinar
HIL Testing of DC-DC Converters – Webinar
Accelerated Development Using Rapid Control Prototyping – Webinar

Testing Power Management Systems

Develop battery management systems and control units for fuel cells using Simulink and Speedgoat hardware. Rapid control prototyping enables you to test controllers and estimation algorithms like state-of-charge (SoC) or state of health (SoH). HIL testing allows you to validate your embedded BMS or fuel cell controller. Use the battery cell simulator capable of emulating up to 320 individual cells in series to validate your complete BMS hardware under typical charge thoroughly and discharge conditions and under fault conditions.

Frequently Used I/O Interfaces

Simulink Application Resources

Developing Battery Management Systems using Simulink - Webinar
Design and Test Lithium Ion Battery Management Algorithms - Reference Application

Developing Battery Chargers

Develop and test onboard battery chargers, high voltage DC chargers, and grid-to-vehicle (G2V) infrastructure using Simulink and Speedgoat hardware. Control and test power converters and include communication protocols like CAN, CAN FD, or SAE J1939 for high-voltage DC charging. Furthermore, use Simscape Electrical models for HIL testing of embedded charging platforms, including power grid emulation.

Frequently Used I/O Interfaces

CAN FD
CAN, LIN & SAE J1939
IEC61850
DNP3
Cinergia Power Amplifier Interface
EGSTON Power Amplifier Interface

Simulink Application Resources

24-hour Simulation of a Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) System – Reference Application
HV Battery Charge/Discharge – Reference Application
Active Power Factor Correction - Video

Success Stories

Intelligent lighting systems for the next generation of vehicles – Success Story
A ground-breaking active suspension system to transform the driving experience – Success Story

Relevant Resources

Simscape Vehicle Templates –Reference Application
Electric Vehicle Configured for HIL – Reference Application
Hybrid Electric Vehicle Input Power Split – Reference Application
Power Split Hybrid Vehicle Electrical Network – Reference Application
Developing Battery Management Systems with Simulink and Model-Based Design – Whitepaper

Testing Workflows

Rapidly prototype control designs by applying rapid control prototyping, test embedded controllers with
hardware-in-the-loop simulation of digital twins, and leverage Speedgoat systems as embedded controllers.

Early Design