Flexible Vehicle Platforms and Energy Management Systems for Medium- and Heavy-Duty Electric Vehicles

Dear Colleagues,

The commercial haulage sector is expected to continue growing in the upcoming decades, especially with medium- and heavy-duty vehicles for road transport. Alongside the environmental concerns, the steadily growing demand poses logistical and increasingly more complex transportation challenges. In order to meet both the environmental and technical–operational–economic targets for these applications, a holistic research approach tackling the challenges on different levels is required. New and future medium-/heavy-duty haulage vehicle designs for urban and suburban mission profiles need to be optimized on a component level (e-powertrain sub-systems or charging infrastructure) and vehicle architecture level, with regard to the efficiency, cost, flexibility, environmental-friendliness, and the size.

Important research topics for these applications and in this context include powertrain design optimization techniques (such as hardware co-design optimization approaches and powertrain control design optimization), component and system modelling approaches and digital twins, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, and powertrain component innovations (i.e., power electronics systems such as inverters, DC/DC converters; and chargers; batteries; electric motors; and cooling systems) and play a key role in the future developments and generations of energy-efficient and cost-effective vehicle powertrains.

The objective of this Special Issue is to collect the recent developments and insights of the worldwide research community and experts and bring this knowledge together to present and discuss the recent advances in the optimization of the powertrain’s design, the innovations regarding the components of the powertrain, powertrain modelling and digital twin simulation, connectivity, and energy management strategies.

• Prospective authors are invited to submit original contributions/articles for review and for possible publication in this SI. The topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
• The design and co-design optimization techniques for electric vehicle powertrains;
• Modular powertrain platforms;
• Charging management strategies;
• Megacharging systems (MCS);
• Energy management strategies;
• New modelling approaches and scalability including real-time modelling, the digital twins of powertrains, and their components;
• Electrical energy and power storage systems;
• Emerging power electronics systems based on novel wide bandgap semiconductor technologies;
• New E/E architectures for electric vehicle systems;
• Battery management systems (BMS);
• Vehicle-to-grid (V2G), vehicle-to-home (V2H), and grid-to-vehicle (G2V) technologies;
• The reliability of power electronics converters.

Prof. Dr. Omar Hegazy
Dr. Steven Wilkins
Dr. Mohamed El Baghdadi
Dr. Dai-Duong Tran
Guest Editors

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• flexible vehicle platform
• energy management systems
• medium electric vehicles
• heavy-duty electric vehicles
• power electronics
• electric machines
• control systems
• charging and energy management strategies
• co-design optimization
• optimization techniques
• powertrain modeling
• digital twins