As part of a U.S. Department of Energy supported study, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has benchmarked a Toyota Prius hybrid electric vehicle from three aspects: system analysis, auxiliary loads, and battery pack thermal performance. This paper focuses on the testing of the battery back out of the vehicle. More recent in-vehicle dynamometer tests have confirmed these out-of-vehicle tests. Our purpose was to understand how the batteries were packaged and performed from a thermal perspective. The Prius NiMH battery pack was tested at various temperatures (0°C, 25°C, and 40°C) and under driving cycles (HWFET, FTP, and US06). The airflow through the pack was also analyzed. Overall, we found that the U.S. Prius battery pack thermal management system incorporates interesting features and performs well under tested conditions.

AbsfracGHyhrid and Electric Vehicles (HEV, EV) require some form of energy storage in order to achieve load leveling or efficiently manage power flows, mainly when accelerating or decelerating. Traditionally, batteries have been used hut recently ultracapacitors have become potential candidates for energy storage in HEViEV applications. To this end, this paper first presents a methodology for determining whether an Energy Storage Unit (ESU) should consist of only batteries, only ultracapacitors or a combination of both. An example illustrates the feasibility of the proposed ideas. Finally, the paper concludes with a cost analysis of the different ESU alternatives.

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