Electric vehicle side-slip control via electronic differential

Abstract

An electronic differential for high-performance electric vehicles with independent driving motors is proposed in this paper. This electronic differential endows the electric vehicle with a close-to-zero vehicle side-slip angle. When vehicle side-slip vanishes, the heading direction of the vehicle coincides with the velocity direction of the mass centre. In addition to the side-slip angle, the yaw rate is driven towards an optimal value with the configuration of the simulated vehicle. The improvements in vehicle side-slip angle and yaw rate responses greatly enhance the stability and handling of the simulated electric vehicle. In this paper, the mathematical relationships between the vehicle dynamic states and the independent motor torques are revealed, based on which the proposed electronic differential controller is designed. Simulation results manifest that in various challenging steering scenarios, the proposed control method outperforms two common electronic differential control schemes in terms of vehicle side-slip angle and yaw rate responses.