| Abstract |
Electromobility is expected to successfully compete with conventional propulsion technology in thenear future and thus creates new challenges for the automotive industry. Major issues with state of theart electric vehicles (EVs) include limited range due to insufficient energy density and heavy weight ofexisting battery storage systems, unsatisfactory charging duration as well as comparatively high costs.A leap in power electronics technology might meet these challenges, as the aforementionedcharacteristics are predominantly determined by existing EV system architectures and powerconverters. This paper presents a novel modular multilevel parallel converter-based split batterysystem for electric vehicles, enabling dynamic switching of battery cells in parallel and in series. Eachindividual battery cell may be interconnected to its neighbours according to operational needs, e.g. toprovide optimum source resistance, lowest state-of-charge (SOC) cycling, and balanced aging,rendering separate battery management systems (BMS) unnecessary. Applying the proposedtechnology in EVs may fundamentally change existing powertrain architectures and chargertopologies, as it merges the battery storage system and the power converter. This forms the basis for ahighly integrated power electronics unit that includes traction converter, battery charger, and BMS. |
