A BLDC Motor-Driven Light Plug-in Electric Vehicle (LPEV) with Cost-Effective On-Board Single-Stage Battery Charging System

This work proposes an efficient configuration for light plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) with a cost-effective and compact charging system. In this paper, an integrated isolated DC-DC converter has been investigated for a light PEV that employs a brushless DC (BLDC) machine as a traction motor to lower the motor drive component cost. The proposed isolated DC-DC converter has the capacity to work efficiently under all working conditions for an electric vehicle including charging, propulsion, and regenerative operations with two energy sources such as utility grid and solar PV. During a battery charging mode by the grid or solar cells, the converter works as an isolated zeta converter. In the propulsion and regenerative operations, the developed converter has buck/boost conversion capability to adjust the dc bus voltage according to driving conditions for the BLDC motor drive to use a cost-effective motor controller and inverter switches. As a result, the overall system is compact, efficient, and cost-effective to make it a suitable solution for an on-board charging system.