With strengthened regulatory policies on CO2 emissions in Europe and the United States, research and development of green cars has steadily been carried out worldwide. One of the most promising configuration seems to be a pure electric vehicle. Howeve...
With strengthened regulatory policies on CO2 emissions in Europe and the United States, research and development of green cars has steadily been carried out worldwide. One of the most promising configuration seems to be a pure electric vehicle. However, with its limited energy capacity, it is still facing numerous issues involving charging infrastructure and possible burden on the power grid system. In an effort to overcome this generic energy limitation with the pure electric vehicle, various types of hybrid electric vehicles have been developed and marketed to the consumers. More recently, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) has been introduced as a new variation and it seems to be quite promising to bridge the gap between the pure electric vehicle and the conventional IC vehicle. In this PHEV configuration, it is well known that the energy management strategy is the most important asset for the success of energy efficiency. Therefore, it is quite important to have a test vehicle platform where you can implement a newly developed energy management strategy to validate quickly and easily. With this in mind, in the current paper, a detailed description on the development of vehicle conversion process from a conventional to a electric vehicle is provided. Prior to the conversion process, a model for a target electric vehicle was developed and after the completion of the vehicle conversion, careful comparisons in various performance parameters are validated. In the near future, this vehicle will be converted again to become a series type PHEV and will serve as a validation vehicle platform for various energy management strategies.