Comprehensive Simulation and Experimental Validation of Sliding Mode Control-based Spacing Control for Battery Electric Vehicles under Uncertain Environments

One-pedal driving (OPD) can help battery electric vehicles (BEVs) improve vehicle efficiency and driving comfort with enhanced regenerative braking. Besides, vehicle platooning can also improve the energy efficiency and thus extend the BEV driving range, through reduction of air drag coefficients of platoon members. The spacing control to achieve short inter-vehicular distance in platooning is rather challenging due to the change of air drag coefficient and other environmental factors (e.g., rolling resistance, road grade). Thus, this paper presents a robust sliding mode control (SMC)-based inter-vehicle distance control framework for an OPD-enabled BEV to accurately achieve the desired inter-vehicle distance in vehicle platooning applications, in presence of uncertainties such as aerodynamic drag coefficient, road grade, and rolling resistance coefficient. The control framework contains a SMC space controller and a high-gain input observer for estimating leading vehicle's acceleration. The framework is validated by both simulations on high-fidelity BEV model with OPD feature and field tests. In addition, a novel method is proposed to analyze the robustness of the controller by adjusting the parameters in the control law, without altering the testing environments. The efficacies of the proposed control framework and the analysis method are proved.