Vehicle manufacturers and Tier 1 suppliers face a growing challenge in finding the most cost-effective solutions to the future of mobility while ensuring that key customer targets such as range are met within a given price point.
ePOP is a concept design tool that applies a systematic approach to optimising any electrified powertrain. It integrates a unique combination of process, toolset and experience to deliver simulation-derived results generated from complex engineering models.
A clear and concise stand-alone user interface enables users of varying skill levels to screen early the potentially huge design space for an electrified propulsion system to meet a target drive cycle or application.
ePOP permits many thousands of powertrain combinations to be defined and evaluated against attributes such as cost, efficiency, mass and range targets in a fraction of the time usually required and across multiple vehicle drive cycles, types and segments.
The user defines the vehicle parameters, such as mass, aerodynamic and rolling resistance coefficients, together with the required performance targets. After creating a design space to match vehicle level requirements, the ePOP tool establishes the optimal powertrain for the necessary objectives (for example, cost or range).
Using DSD’s extensive experience combined with customers’ in-house knowledge, users can objectively narrow down the prime electric drive candidates to take forward. This significantly shortens the innovation stage of powertrain development, bringing confidence and objectivity to the strategies and solutions selected.
In addition to the core light-duty automotive market for which the tool was initially developed, ePOP can provide a comprehensive preliminary analysis of any electric powertrain, including heavy-duty commercial, off-highway, marine and aerospace applications.
The more pioneering the customer application, the greater the unknowns and the more valuable ePOP can be in establishing ‘where to start.
For the first time, customers can analyse and rank the benefits of the bewildering assortment of architectures and individual product technologies available for powertrain electrification. But, at the same time, it is still early enough to react.
By establishing the answers to complex ‘what-if’ scenarios, assessments can be made to adjust a platform’s sensitivity to factors such as volatile motor magnet costs or fluctuations in raw material pricing that have a knock-on effect on battery costs.
ePOP’s ability to analyse thousands of permutations against multiple criteria makes it easy to drill down through the generated data to quickly establish where the opportunities lie and to do so in a fraction of the time typically required.
Once the prime candidates have been identified, subsequent intensive analysis through simulation and engineering modelling can be justified, safe in the knowledge that the optimal fundamental characteristics have already been optimally selected.
This results in benefits and savings at several critical points throughout the process: a reduced product cost by optimising its characteristics to suit its application; time and cost savings in the development process that arise as a result of confidence in the best solution having been selected, or the sharing of engineering effort across multiple platforms; and end-user benefits that can be measured in terms of a reduced purchase price or increased vehicle range by ‘right-sizing of components, a key customer metric.
DSD identified common themes among the challenges faced by OEM and Tier 1 customers while delivering electrified powertrain programs over more than ten years.
Tools and software for the evaluation of mature designs are widely available. Still, they are of little value during design’s critical early concept stages when important decisions are made, constraining subsequent design freedom.
It was explicitly created to consider real-world issues such as range while developing a new electrified drive system. It aided our customers in determining the best overall strategy for an individual component or a family of electrified systems across a range of segments and sectors.
DSD recognised the need to support subjective, often biased decision making during the early stages of architectural layout and technology selection by providing objective information at a system level.
The most innovative aspect of ePOP is the post-processing interface, enabling the vast database generated from the attributes of the many individual powertrain elements to be quickly interrogated.
This permits the user to extract information and discover underlying trends clearly and informally so that trade-offs can be identified and optimum solutions selected.
This enables choices to be made from a far more comprehensive range of alternatives and flags up trends that may be counter-intuitive, ensuring that the optimum result is not overlooked.
Another innovative feature of ePOP is that, unlike most standardised software products, ePOP is supplied as a bespoke solution, customised to suit individual customer requirements. So, for example, while most customers may define the e-motor design space using just five attributes, one particular customer required this to be increased to 20, which was readily accommodated.