Hybrid Electric Vehicle Platoon Control and Optimal Energy Management System for Fuel Economy, Safety, and Dynamic Performance

Nowadays, to comply with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) proposed by the United Nations, the carbon footprint of the transportation sector must be drastically reduced. Focusing on ground vehicles, Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (C-ACC) may represent a game changer by improving energy utilization efficiency, traffic flow, and road safety. Although hybrid electric vehicles can benefit the most from a C-ACC, an integrated approach is required to exploit the full potential of these control strategies. Therefore, in this paper, the integration of vehicle platoon control and optimal Energy Management System (EMS) is tested on a set of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, in charge sustaining mode, following a Real Driving Emissions (RDE) compliant route. The Linear-Quadratic-Control (LQC) technique was selected to fulfil the cooperative tasks of the platoon systems, while the associated fuel minimization problem was formulated and solved by means of a global optimization algorithm, i.e., Dynamic Programming (DP). Simulation results are presented for different values of time headway, evaluating the effect that this parameter has on the entire platoon and on each vehicle fuel consumption.