Abstract
The three-wheeled vehicle, called an “auto-rickshaw”, with a four-stroke petrol, LPG or CNG engine is one of the most common and affordable means of transportation (for hire) in Indian cities. It is a small, highly manoeuvrable vehicle and ideally suited for the narrow and traffic clogged streets of urban India. Electric and hybrid vehicles are particularly suited for use in urban areas since city transportation is mainly characterized by relatively short driving distances, low continuous power requirements, long idling times and high availability of regenerative braking energy. These characteristics, when carefully incorporated into the design process, create valuable opportunities for developing clean, efficient and cost effective urban vehicle propulsion systems. A novel, low cost, test-bed for experimenting with hybrid propulsion systems for urban areas is developed and presented in this work. The main objective of this work is to study the performance of a parallel hybrid configuration with a DC hub motor and an IC engine. The hybrid configuration in this case adds speed at the wheel output unlike the normal power split configuration which adds torque. The addition of speed is done by connecting the output of engine and CVT to the stator of an electric hub motor. This novel setup is compared with torque addition where the output of the engine is coupled with the output of the DC motor using a gear transmission arrangement.
KEYWORDS – Urban mobility, Hybrid, Test bed, Parallel, Hub motor