The Development and Testing of a Lead-Acid Battery for a Hybrid Electric Vehicle

摘要

At the last AABC held in Nice, a presentation was given on the early stages of the ALABC RHOLAB (Reliable, Highly Optimised, Lead Acid Battery) project which has been funded under the UK Foresight Vehicle Programme. The purpose of the project has been to develop an optimized lead-acid battery solution for hybrid electric vehicles based on a novel design of spirally wound, 2V VRLA cell. This cell is being used as a building block for the development of a complete battery pack that is managed at the cell level. That paper described work carried out on the design and development of the prototype double-ended cell, the development of the battery pack specification and modular pack design and the development of the battery management system. Bench test results indicated that the cells were capable of delivering the high rate performance required by the test vehicle and that cell conditioning was capable of extending battery life under this partial state-of-charge duty cycle. While the realisation of the construction of the battery modules, the battery management system and the associated software have been more complex and time-consuming than originally envisaged, the battery has now been fitted into the Honda Insight acquired as a test-bed. After the initial system integration work, the project plan is to test the vehicle with its lead-acid battery for up to 50,000 miles on a combination of the high speed, hill and urban circuits at the Millbrook Proving Grounds in the UK.