Hierarchical Optimal Control of a Group of Electric Vehicles for Maximizing Energy Efficiency and Battery Life

Advances in cooperative control of vehicle platoon enhance transportation efficiency and diminish energy consumption to ground-based delivery vehicles, such as electric vehicles (EVs). Yet, the existing EVs platoon studies tend to highlight the economicsm ignoring the battery life of EVs. To tackle it, a hierarchical optimal control (HOC) strategy is proposed for EVs platoon to improve energy efficiency and to alleviate battery degradation. The upper layer calculates the range of gain using the feedback control strategy, while the lower layer adopts an artificial fish swarm algorithm (AFS) to obtain the optimal gain value derived from the upper level. Three case studies, feedback control of EVs platoon without gain optimization (FCO), only energy efficiency is considered for the lower layer of the HOC (HOC-1) and HOC are simulated. The results manifest the compelling battery life enhancement of HOC and its hidden contribution on energy efficiency.