Special Session #1 – IEEE VTS Motor Vehicles Challenge 2024: Energy and Powertrain Losses Management of an e-Racing Vehicle

Co-chair: Ke Li, University of Nottingham, UK
Co-chair: Thanh Vo Duy, Hanoi University of Technology and Science, Vietnam
Co-chair: Alessandro Serpi, University of Cagliari, Italy
Co-chair: Mario Porru, University of Cagliari, Italy

Abstract: Motor Vehicle Challenge (MVC), supported by IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, is an annual activity to find an appropriate energy management strategy to improve electric vehicles’ performance. In MVC 2024, power losses and efficiency of power converters using silicon carbide MOSFET and an internal permanent magnet (IPM) motor are modelled and implemented into an electric vehicle powertrain model for a racing vehicle with hybrid energy storage sources. The objective of the developed strategy is to minimise both the energy consumption of the energy storage sources and the losses and cost of all the power electronics converters, and the electric machine. Participants from both academia and industry are welcome to participate and submit the solutions for the Challenge. Anyone that developed a solution for this competition is encouraged to submit a contribution to this special session.

Co-chair Bios:

Ke Li: Ke Li received the Ph.D degree in electrical engineering from University of Lille, France, in 2014. From 2015 to 2019, he was Research Fellow in Power Electronics, Machines and Control (PEMC) Group, the University of Nottingham. Afterwards, he was appointed as Assistant Professor in Power Electronics, Machines and Drives in Coventry University. In Sept. 2022, he came back to the University of Nottingham and joined the PEMC group as Assistant Professor. His research interests include the modelling and the integration of silicon and wide-bandgap (SiC/GaN) power semiconductor devices to high power-density and high efficiency power converters, as well as their application for electric vehicles.

Since 2016, he has been actively involved into technical sessions chairing and organisation of IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference. He served as a guest editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology in 2022, and has been serving as IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Motor Vehicle Challenge Committee chair since 2023.

Thanh Vo Duy: Thanh Vo-Duy (Member, IEEE) received M.S. degree in Automation Engineering and Ph.D. in Control Engineering and Automation from Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST), Hanoi, Vietnam in 2007 and 2019, respectively. From 2005 to 2006, he was a researcher on robotics at Meijo University, Japan. Since 2006, he has been a lecturer with the Department of Automation Engineering, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, HUST. He has also worked as a researcher with Control Techniques and Innovation (CTI) Laboratory for Electric Vehicles (EVs) since 2009. He was the chair of the IEEE-VTS Motors Vehicle Challenge 2022. Recently, he is a member of the VPP Technical Committee. He is the chair of the E16 Technical Committee, developing the Vietnam National Standard for Energy Transfer System for EVs. His research interests include embedded systems, control of electric vehicles, control of power electronics and electric drives, system modeling, and simulation.

Alessandro Serpi: Alessandro Serpi got the master’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of Cagliari (UNICA) in Dec. 2004. Subsequently, he received the title of Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial Engineering in Feb. 2009, working at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (DIEE) of UNICA and discussing a dissertation entitled “Predictive Control of Electrical Drives”.

Alessandro Serpi did research at DIEE from 2009 to 2015 as a Post-Doc Researcher and from 2015 to 2021 as Assistant Professor. Since Nov. 2021, Alessandro Serpi has been an Associate Professor at DIEE. His activity has focused mainly on the development and implementation of advanced control strategies and Model Predictive Control algorithms for electrical drives and power electronic converters by means of FPGA-based control boards, as well as on the development and implementation of optimal management and control algorithms for electrical drives and energy storage systems. He has been involved in several research projects, also as Principal Investigator (PI). Particularly, he is currently PI of the NEPTUNE project (Sept. 2023-Sept-2025), funded by MUR under the call PRIN 2022.

Alessandro Serpi is co-author of 116 scientific publications (25 in international journals, 91 in international conference proceedings) and two book chapters. He was a speaker at several international conferences (IECON, ICEM, SPEEDAM, VPPC, etc.), Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, and reviewer for many international journals and conferences. He is proposing associate, co-founder, Sole Director and Chief Technology Officer of NEPSY srl, an academic spin-off company of UNICA, whose main activity is the development, production and marketing of novel components and systems for electric propulsion. He is a member of IEEE and he has been recipient of some IEEE awards.

Mario Porru: Mario Porru received his MSc in Electrical Engineering in 2011 and his PhD in Electronic and Computer Engineering in 2015, both from the University of Cagliari, Italy. He was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Cagliari from April 2015 to April 2018. In June 2017 he co-founded NEPSY, a spin-off company that deals with the development, design and commercialisation of novel electric propulsion systems. Since April 2018 Mario Porru is an Assistant Professor of Power converters, electrical machines and drives at the University of Cagliari. He has been a Visiting Researcher at the FEMTO-ST Lab / University of Technology of Belfort and Montbéliard, Belfort (France, March 2019 – July 2019) and at the University of Nebrija, Madrid (Spain, September 2023 – November 2023).
Mario Porru’s research activity mainly concerns developing management and control strategies for energy storage systems and hybrid energy storage systems for transport and stationary applications, as well as electric propulsion system design optimisation. He is Principal Investigator of the Italian national PRIN project “OPTeBUS: Development of an OPtimal design Tool for Electrification of urban public transportation BUS services”.
Mario Porru is a co-author of more than 50 papers published in international journals and conference proceedings. He has been a speaker at several international conferences, he has been a Technical Program Committee member of several IEEE conferences and was local chair of the IEEE IESES 2020 conference. He is a member of IEEE and of some of its society and committees. He is co-chair of the IEEE VTS Motor Vehicles Challenge 2024.

 

To submit a paper, please visit: https://vppc2024.trackchair.com/