SMART ForTwo Hybrid

Presenter Information

Peter Sparks, Minnesota State University - Mankato

Location

CSU 204

Start Date

21-4-2014 3:15 PM

End Date

21-4-2014 4:15 PM

Student's Major

Automotive and Manufacturing Engineering Technology

Student's College

Science, Engineering and Technology

Mentor's Name

Bruce Jones

Mentor's Email Address

bruce.jones@mnsu.edu

Mentor's Department

Automotive and Manufacturing Engineering Technology

Mentor's College

Science, Engineering and Technology

Description

Oil and gas prices are going up each year and at some point the reserves are going to run out of fossil fuels creating a shortage. The research being conducted is to implement a hybrid system on 2005 SMART ForTwo to reduce the amount of fossil fuels used. The SMART ForTwo project was intended to create a hybrid vehicle that would be powered by a Cal Motors electric motor in addition to a diesel engine. Integration works by using LabVIEW to program the vehicle; it will run 100% electric motor to 20km/hr, switch to use both the electric and diesel motors together up 40 km/hr while slowly reducing the amount of input from the electric motor, and finally only the diesel motor above 40km/hr. The goals of this project were to set up a battery management system that can effectively communicate with each battery cell and provide real time data on voltage, temperature, and will balance the cells. In order to achieve these goals the right battery management system needed to be selected to communicate with the 3.4V lithium ion batteries that are already in place. The elithion battery management system was selected and is currently being installed. Although it is too early in the project to have any results the vehicle is expected to have a fully functional hybrid system that switches from electric to diesel at predetermined points, communicates effectively with the batteries, and achieves over 100mpg which greatly cuts down on the use of fossil fuels.