An Intelligent Model for Facilitating Plug-in Electric Vehicle Battery Pack Standardization

Abstract:

The development of electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy sources are regarded as key components for the achievement of sustainable transport systems to enable the improvements in energy optimization and air quality. In recent years, EVs are widely used by the public as one of sustainable transportation measure, but the battery charging for EVs create a number of challenges, for example lack of charging station in urban area and difficult for battery maintenance. Among various components in EVs, the battery pack is one of the consumables which requires regularly inspection and repair regarding its battery performance in terms of battery life cycle and stability. Once technical problems occur for the battery pack, end users need to afford expensive fee for investigation and repairing. Moreover, for charging the EVs, they require to visit the specific charging station with using the tailor-made charging adaptors, which cause certain inconvenience for charging. Also, the EV charging station cannot be shared and compatible with all different types of EVs. To solve the above problems, the plug-in electric vehicle battery pack standardization (PEVBPS) is a way-out to provide a uniform, standardized and mobile EV battery which is managed by the centralized service providers for the repair and maintenance work. Its ease of use can let end users change the batteries in their own EVs by themselves, like the usage of power bank in smart phones. In this research project, the facilitation of the PEVBPS is achieved by (i) forecasting of the product life cycle for decision-making in the EV industry, and (ii) trust establishment in the EV user network by means of blockchain. Consequently, the eco-system of the EV industry can be sustained effectively, resulting in better user experience of using EVs.