Fast and Curious: Exposure of EMI Vulnerability of an Electric Scooter for a Risk-Based EMC Approach

Compliance of lone equipment with the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) standards does not directly result in proper operation when used on the system level, especially in large and complex structures. A more robust way to incorporate possible unwanted behaviors and unpredicted scenarios is to expand the EMC testing by adopting the risk-based EMC approach. This letter addresses an electromagnetic interference (EMI) case caused by a differential mode voltage excitation on a cable harness of an electric scooter focusing on the first step of an EMC assessment procedure, which is the EMI vulnerability investigation. The objective of this research is to detect and expose the vulnerability of a real case study caused by an uncommon cause. This is done by a vector network analyzer measurement and the direct power injection method. The goal of this research is to demonstrate the importance of adopting a risk-based EMC approach while performing EMC testing.