Optimisation of the underhood flow for improving energy efficiency of BEVs

Research Project, 2022 – 2025

Energy efficient vehicles are essential for a future sustainable society, and today, all car manufacturers work on extending the driving range on their Battery Electrical Vehicles (BEV) through efficient energy
management. Since the available energy in a BEV is limited, it is crucial to minimize all energy losses. With this overall goal, the project main objectives are:
• Propose improvements to the underhood that will result in an increased range extension of 0.5-1.0 %
on the test vehicle in cruising conditions.
• Improve and extend in-house knowledge on the design of front air-intakes, connecting channels and
position of heat exchangers with regards to their impact on drag.
• Design a test vehicle, to be used partly as a reference model, but also to enable tests of innovative
solutions for cooling/heating air flow.
• Use wind tunnel tests for drag estimates in combination with underhood aero and thermal
measurements employing, e.g., laser technology.
• Develop and use advanced CFD methods for coupled aerodynamic and thermal computations.
• Study the influence of diverse flow environment conditions such as cross winds on the cooling and
heating performance of a given design.
• Investigate possibilities of active control solutions through movable flaps and guiding vanes.