Design methodology for high performance electric vehicle power electronics

A design methodology for high performance electric vehicle power electronics is presented in this paper. A conventional state-of-the-art power electronics inverter designed using standard design techniques that uses commercially available off the shelf parts and a small number of conventionally manufacturable mechanical parts is analysed. The apparent benefits of this converter are shown to be difficult to translate to vehicle-level benefits due to integration overheads. A design methodology is presented for high performance electric vehicle power electronics that uses a figure of merit approach to include key parameters such as weight, cost, thermal performance, integration and size as well as the standard electrical performance for a typical high performance electric vehicle. This design approach could be used to design all types of electric vehicle and this alternative vehicle-level design methodology is able to more easily leverage the the benefits of SiC at a whole-vehicle level.