Estimation of the Energy Consumption of an Electric Utility Vehicle: A Case Study

The development of electric vehicles (EV’s) has been growing in last decade since is a promising technology that will optimize the use of energy. The estimation of energy consumption is a key task to design and select components of power train, control strategies and predict lifecycle. Some factors such as road slope, temperature, type of route, driver’s behavior directly affect the energy consumption. This article provides an easy methodology to estimate energy consumption for an electric utility vehicle (EUV) using Green Race Software, which allows different types of routes, estimate a road slope, energy consumption and percentage of regeneration. From this analysis, is possible to decide the best route for harvesting cocoa and sizing the powertrain of the vehicle before purchasing materials. The most important advantage of the proposal method is that can be used in early stage of design and assembly of EV’s.