Battery Cell Imbalance and Electric Vehicles Range: Correlation and NMPC-based Balancing Control

Battery cell imbalance in electric vehicles (EV) has been extensively investigated in the literature to understand its origin and mitigation control. However, the correlation between cell imbalance and EV range deserves further investigation, which can be critical in designing a balancing controller. To address this issue, this paper conducts a Monte Carlo simulation to randomly sample cell parameters with different standard deviations to analyze their impacts. More specifically, distance correlation will be utilized to measure the correlation between battery cell parameters/variations and EV driving range. Furthermore, a nonlinear model predictive controller is developed to illustrate the efficacy of balancing controls in extending EV driving range.