Maintenance and Repair Impacts on Electric Vehicles: Presentation of Study Layout and First Results-Manuscript for EVS 31 EVTeC 2018

摘要

To improve the technical concept, the high voltage (HV) components and the product quality of tomorrows Electric Vehicles (EV) it is crucial to learn from the in-use experience of todays EVs. In this respect, analyzing EV maintenance and repair can be of great interest, because technology and work tasks are different to vehicles with conventional drivetrain and differ a lot from model to model. This research program monitors the implemented strategies of current EV available in the German market. The results are crosschecked by practical case studies with selected vehicles. Maintenance work on Hybrid Electrical Vehicles (HEV), Plug-in Hybrid Electrical Vehicles (PHEV) and Range Extended Electrical Vehicles (REEV) includes a high voltage system check and specific work tasks on HV components together with the conventional maintenance of the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE). These conventional work tasks are obsolete at Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) and Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCV), where there is additional maintenance work on the hydrogen-system. This leads to different maintenance and repair work tasks and corresponding spare parts according to the different powertrains. Analyzing the serviceability of EVs and their main high voltage modules one can see different methods of disconnecting the high voltage system to achieve a current free status. While one model needs 80 min and a special toolset to disconnect the HV system, the Best-in-class solution takes 5 minutes and doesn't require any special tool. These facts indicate high potential for future improvements in the EV maintenance and repair systems.