Self-Diagnostic Opportunities for Battery Systems in Electric and Hybrid Vehicles

The number of battery systems is also growing significantly along with the rise in electric and hybrid car sales. Different vehicles use different types and numbers of batteries. Furthermore, the layout and operation of the control and protection electronics units may also differ. The research aims to develop an approach that can autonomously detect and localize the weakest cells. The method was validated by testing the battery systems of three different VW e-Golf electric vehicles. A wide-range discharge test was performed to examine the condition assessment and select the appropriate state of charge (SoC) for all three vehicles. On the one hand, the analysis investigated the cell voltage deviations from the average; the tests cover deviations of 0 mV, 12 mV, 60 mV, 120 mV, and 240 mV. On the other hand, the mean value calculation was used to filter out possible erroneous values. Another important aspect was examining the relationship between the state of charges (SoC) and the deviations. Therefore, the 10% step changes were tested to see which SoC level exhibited more significant voltage deviations. Based on the results, it was observed that there are differences between the cases, and the critical range is not necessarily at the lowest SoC level. Furthermore, the load rate (current) and time of its occurrence play an important role in the search for a faulty cell. An additional advantage of this approach is that the process currently being tested on the VW e-Golf can be relatively simply transferred to other types of vehicles. It can also be a very useful addition for autonomous vehicles, as it can self-test the cells in the system at low power consumption.