2011 IEEE Forum on Integrated and

Sustainable Transportation Systems

Vienna, Austria, June 29 - July 1, 2011

Electric Vehicle Simulator for Energy Consumption Studies in Electric

Mobility Systems
Ricardo Maia, Marco Silva, Rui Araujo, and Urbano Nunes
into account energy issues and traffic analysis, such as route
planning, street connectivity and directions, and placement
of recharging stations.
Modeling and simulation methods are essential elements
in design and operation of transportation systems. Several
reasons justify the simulation task. Construction costs can
be minimized with prior simulation; analysis may be done
with minimum risk; dynamic analysis can be made without
need of prototype construction; simulation analysis can be
made in the design phase of the system at a fraction of the
cost of construction. Transportation systems are the backbone
connecting the vital parts of a city / region and thereby the indepth understanding of the transportation system components
is essential for the planning, design and operational analysis
of the city / region. The EV energy consumption can be
reduced by many ways, namely by choosing best routes.
Alves et al. [2] uses the ant colony optimization algorithm to
improve route choice. In [3], the routing problem is characterized using multi-agent systems. The agents actions may
use internal state information about the vehicle itself such
as vehicle size, top speed or torque. A real-time carpooling
system using Djisktras algorithm with an objective function
combining waiting time and traveling time is proposed in
[4]. In [5], Sghaeier et al. report an architecture for data
collection and analysis performance from EV. Related works
to route improvement apply some kind of computational
intelligence, like genetic algorithm and fuzzy logic [6], [7],
[8], [9] but none of them address issues related with EV, like
performance, range and route optimization, aiming minimum
energy consumption.
EV employ regenerative breaking technology, which allows the conversion of kinetic energy into electrical energy
when the vehicle is slowing down or is driving downhill.
With regenerative breaking, the electric drive motor also
functions as a generator, supplying energy back to the batteries. To simulate this characteristic, traffic simulators environment need to be three-dimensional, e.g., altitude has to be
known and must be represented in the environment model.
However, known traffic simulators are two-dimensional, i.e.,
the maps lie in Cartesian x-y projection, and therefore are
not appropriate to simulate regenerative breaking.
This paper describes components that extend the 2D traffic
simulator package SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility)
[10] in a 3D simulation environment for electrical vehicles.
The EV model used here follows closely the formulations
described in [11]. It was developed to provide a means for
conducting studies of electric mobility in urban areas. The
model was inserted into the car-following model proposed

Abstract One of the most important environmental problems in large cities is the vehicular emission. Electric Vehicles
(EVs) are a growing alternative for internal combustion engine
(ICE) vehicles. Since this kind of vehicle has low autonomy yet,
it is important to optimize energy consumption, for instance by
planning a suitable infrastructure of battery recharge and/or
battery-switch stations. This paper presents an architecture for
EV simulation, important to analyze traffic flow, its dynamics
and the performance when there are obstructions or intense
traffic. There are several tools for traffic simulation, SUMO
(Simulation of Urban MObility) is one of them. But none
of the existing traffic simulators integrates models of EV
that allow, for example, perform simulation studies regarding
energy consumption. SUMO is a portable open source simulator
with multi-modal traffic feature capabilities that permit the
simulation of various types of vehicles. This work is an extension of the SUMO, two-dimensional (2D) vehicular simulation
package. To allow the simulation of energy consumption of
EV, two extensions were incorporated in SUMO: EV models
and modeling of altitude, transforming SUMO into a threedimensional (3D) simulator. The energy model effectiveness and
correctness with 3D capabilities has been validated using two
driving schedules (Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule and
Highway Fuel Economy Driving Schedule). This new tool will
also support the study of better routes choice in 3D environment
with EV aiming minimum energy consumption.

I. I NTRODUCTION
The increasing number of motor vehicles on the streets
and roads is demanding an active transport policy. This
growth also results in traffic jams and appearance of a
wide diversity of drivers with different driving behaviors,
increasing the probability of accidents. These are only two
reasons why developed countries have a great interest in
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).
Nowadays, petrols high cost and serious environmental
pollution problems deriving from fossil burning fuel led
automotive industry to heavily investing in plug-in electrical
vehicles (PHEV) as well as fully electric vehicles (EV).
In [1], Spongenberg states that the number of electric cars
on European roads is going to boost next years due to oil
prices, climate change concerns and tough EU environment
regulations. The use of EV raises several problems taking
This work was partially supported by the Portuguese Foundation for
Science and Technology (FCT) under grant PTDC/SEN-TRA099413/2008
(EVSIM09 Project).
Rui Araujo and Urbano Nunes are with the DEEC - Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Coimbra, Portugal. All
authors are with the ISR-Institute of Systems and Robotics, University of
Coimbra, Portugal.
Ricardo Maia and Marco Silva also acknowledge PhD fellowships granted
by FCT, respectively SFRH/BD/44644/2008 and SFRH/BD/38998/2007.
Marco Silva is also with IPC-ISEC - Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra,
Coimbra, Portugal. email: {rmmaia, msilva, rui, urbano}@isr.uc.pt

978-1-4577-0991-3/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

228

appearing in (2) to (6) are physical constants, or related

to vehicles physical characteristics, and their meaning are
stated in Table I. It should be noted that EV have regenerative
braking feature. This means that, if Fte is negative, the
tractive force will not be applied from the electrical motor
to the wheels, but from the wheels to the motor; and the
current will flow into the battery, charging it. Frr and Fad
are friction forces and they must be as low as possible to
minimize energy consumption, which is achieved with a
good design reducing rr , A and Cd . Both Frr and Fad
are non-negative; so, only Fhc and Fla , together, are able to
make Fte negative. Fhc will be negative when the vehicle
is going downhill ( < 0), and Fla will be negative when
the vehicle is slowing down (a < 0). The mechanical energy
required to move the vehicle is
Z
Ete =
Fte v dt
(7)

TABLE I: Physical constants.

constants
g

rr
A
Cd

m
v
a
I
G
r
g

meaning
acceleration due to gravity
air density
coefficient of rolling resistance
vehicle frontal area
drag coefficient
angle of slope or hill
vehicle mass
vehicle velocity
vehicle linear acceleration
moment of inertia of rotor of the motor
gear ratio of the system
radius of the tyre
gear system efficiency

by Krau [12], [13], but can be easily adapted for other carfollowing models.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II establishes
the EV model with focus on the energy consumption component. Section III presents the simulation software and its
modifications. Section IV describes the simulation scenario
and simulation relevant results. Finally, in Section V, some
concluding remarks are drawn.

so that the energy taken from battery to be supplied to the

traction motor to provide Ete (7), is
E
te

,
driven case,
(8)

m g
Emot in =

Ete m g ,
regenerative case. (9)

where m and g are the motor and the gear system efficiencies, respectively. When the vehicle is being driven, it
holds (8); but if the motor is being used to slow the vehicle
down, the efficiency works in the opposite sense, supplying
energy to the battery, and (9) takes place. Finally, it must
be considered all other vehicles electrical systems (lights,
heating, cooling, indicators, radio, etc.), Eac , which shall be
added to the motor energy. Thus, the total energy required
from the battery is

II. M ODEL D ESCRIPTION

An EV is a complex system including several subsystems, such as: mechanical, electrical, control, magnetic,
pneumatic, electrochemical and hydraulic, etc. In this work,
most subsystems are abstracted, and only those needed to
provide mechanical and electrical traction to vehicle will be
characterized.
A. Mechanical Traction
The force needed to provide mechanical traction to propel
the vehicle forward is the tractive effort. This force has
to overcome the rolling resistance, aerodynamic drag, hill
climbing force, the force to accelerate the vehicle and the
force to provide angular acceleration to the traction motor.
Thus, the tractive effort can be expressed as [11]:
Fte

= Frr + Fad + Fhc + Fla + Fwa

(1)

= rr mg (rolling resistence force);

1
=
ACd v 2 (aerodynamic drag);
2
= g sin() (vehicles weight component);

(2)

Ebat

Fad
Fhc
Fla
Fwa

Emot in + Eac

(10)

B. Electrical Traction
When in driven case, the power required from the motor to
make the vehicle run at a certain speed is supplied from the
battery. On the other hand, in regenerative case, the current
flows into the battery. The current that flows from/into the
battery is expressed by:

where:
Frr

p
2 4R P

Voc Voc

in bat

2R
in

I=
p

2 + 4R P

Voc + Voc
in bat

2R

in

(3)
(4)

= ma (force required to give linear

acceleration);
(5)
G2
a (force required to give rotational
= I
g r2
acceleration to the traction motor);
(6)

driven
case,

(11)

regenerative
case.

(12)

where Voc is the open circuit voltage from the battery, Rin
is its internal resistance, and Pbat is the power produced by
the current. As the motor drains current from battery, what
is really needed to be known is how battery discharges while

Since frequently the motors moment of inertia is not

known, in these cases it is reasonable to increase the vehicles
mass by 5% in (5) and ignore Fwa . The physical quantities
229

Fig. 2: Interaction between SUMOs traffic module and

energy module.

A. Modifications
To simulate energy consumption of EVs, SUMOs vehicle
class has been modified to receive attributes and methods
to implement the functionalities explained in Section II.
Moreover, the energy can be regenerated when the vehicle
slows down or goes downhill. Thus, the bi-dimensional road
network was changed to receive the z coordinate, related
to the elevation of the network nodes. Fig. 1 shows a
schematic of the main processes and data files involved
in the simulation process using SUMO [14]. A new file,
XML altitudes, was added in order to allow the specification of road elevation. This way, the NETCONVERT
tool, gets the extra z attributes from XML altitudes
file and outputs the road network (XML network) which
incorporates the elevation information. EV physical parameters and routes information are provided to the SUMO
simulator through XML consumption and XML route
files, respectively.

Fig. 1: Simulation process with SUMO.

the EV is moving. The depth of discharge (DoD) is given

by
DoD

CR
Cp

(13)

where Cp denotes the Peukert Capacity and CR is the charge

removed. If in regenerative case
Z
CR =
I dt
(14)
otherwise, in driven case
CR

I dt

Algorithm 1 Energy Model Pseudo-code.

1: Receive from CFM values of next velocity vi+1 , last
value of velocity vi and acceleration a;
2: Calculate torque T needed to apply those acceleration
and velocity;
3: if (T > Tmax ) then
4:
Calculate new vi+1 and a values to reach Tmax ;
5: end if
6: Calculate Pmot ;
7: Pbat = Pmot + Pac ;
8: Calculate battery current I to provide Pbat , using (11)
or (12);
9: Calculate DoDi+1 , the DoD in the next time step;
10: if (DoDi+1 > DoDlimit ) then
11:
Re-calculate I and Pbat values;
12:
Re-calculate vi+1 and a values;
13:
Re-calculate DoDi+1 ;
14: end if
15: Return vi+1 ;

(15)

where k denotes the Peukert Coefficient.

III. S IMULATION PACKAGE
The consumption model described in the previous section
was implemented as a module of SUMO. Here, we describe
a few features of SUMO and the modifications made to
incorporate new features. The main features of SUMO traffic
simulator are:

support different vehicle types,

capable of handling large road networks,
handle bi-dimensional networks,
computationally fast.

Its vehicles flows model (car-following model [12]) is

based on microscopic routes, where each vehicle is treated
individually with its own route. The model is also continuous
in space and discrete in time. The package is open source,
licensed under the GPL (General Public License) and highly
portable.

The interaction between SUMOs car-following module

(CFM) and the new EV energy module is illustrated in
230

TABLE II: Battery Pack Parameters.

TABLE III: Range with NiMH Battery.

Manufacturer: Ovonic Energy Products

Type: Nyckel Metal Hydride
Number of Modules: 26
Weight of Module: 18.3 kg
Weight of Pack(s): 481 kg
Nominal Module Voltage: 13.2 V
Nominal System Voltage: 343 V
Nominal Capacity: 77 AH
Stored Energy: 26.4 kWh

Drive
Schedule
UDDS
HWFET

CEPA
report
230.087km
244.568km

SUMO

variation

230.406km
253.588km

0.14%
3.68%

Depth of Discharge (%)

1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6

Fig. 2. In each time step of the SUMO simulation process,

the desired vehicle velocity is determined depending on the
velocity limit of the road, and the traffic demand represented
by the distance to the vehicle ahead and its velocity. For
the car-following module to provide the desired velocity, the
energy module verifies each time step if there is enough
energy in battery to produce the required power. For this
propose, the torque is calculated by

0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0

10000

15000
time (s)

20000

25000

30000

25000

30000

Battery Voltage (V)

Fte r
(16)
G
where Fte is given by (1), r is the radius of the tyre, and
G is the gear ratio. If (16) is higher than the maximum
torque, Tmax , which the EV motor can provide then new
velocity and acceleration values are calculated such that Fte
produces Tmax . Next, Ebat is calculated by (10) and it is
verified if there is enough energy in the battery to supply to
the motor. If not, new velocity and acceleration values are
calculated based on the information of the existing residual
energy in the battery. Algorithm 1 summarizes the Energy
Models processing and computations.
T

5000

370
360
350
340
330
320
310
300
290
280
0

IV. S IMULATION S CENARIO

5000

10000

15000
time (s)

20000

Fig. 3: UDDS: DoD evolution (19 cycles) and battery pack

voltage.

A. The vehicle
The simulation experiments the vehicle model uses the
parameters of the EV1 electric vehicle produced by General
Motors from 1996 to 1998. This model was chosen since it
has been widely used in previous studies. The EV1 parameters values are: A = 1.89 m2 , Cv = 0.19, rr = 0.005,
length = 4.31 m, maximum acceleration = 3.08 m/s2 ,
maximum deceleration = 1.0 m/s2 and maximum speed
of 129 km/h. The considered density of the air was =
1.25 kg/m3 . The motor and the gear system efficiencies,
m and g respectively, were taken from [15]. The internal
resistance Rin and open circuit voltage Voc of the battery
pack were modeled according to [16], [17] and [18]. The
battery pack main parameters ate be shown in Table II.

under 96 km/h. Table III shows the ranges of EV1 reported by

CEPA [18] and ranges obtained by the simulations performed
in SUMO extended with the EV and elevations models here
proposed. These results show a close matching between the
developed models implemented in SUMO and the CEPA
data. The DoD (13) and the voltage drop during the 19
complete UDDS discharge cycles is plotted in Fig. 3. In
Fig. 4, depicts the power supplied by the battery pack for
the first UDDS cycle. The maximum drained power and
the maximum regenerated power value is 34 kW and
21 kW, respectively. These values are within the motor/inverter capabilities. The discharged cycles were applied
to 95% DoD to not exceed the cut-off voltage.
The 3D circuit shown in Fig. 5 was used in the constant
speed tests. The circuit connects three straight-line road
segments. The first road segment ac has a positive slope
of 3.24%. The second road segment connects points c and
b with 0% slope. Finally, a road segment of negative slope
of 6.68% links points b and a. After the a c b a

B. The Road Network

Two types of tests were performed to verify the range of
the simulated vehicle: driving cycles tests [11] and constant
speed tests. Two driving cycles specified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [16] were used: the Urban
Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS), representing city
driving conditions; and the Highway Fuel Economy Driving
Schedule (HWFET) representing highway driving conditions
231

10000

Delivered / Regenerated Power (kW)

40

6000

30

10
0

.4

8%

%)
3.24
m(
4
9
299

3
99
14

2000

20

(6

c
16054 m (0%)

a
5000

10000

15000 20000
(a)

-10
-20

25000

30000

State of Charge
1

-30
0

200

400

600
800
time (s)

1000

1200

1400

0.9

0.7

Fig. 4: First UDDS cycle power request.

0.8

0.6

0.5

c
a

0.4

TABLE IV: Constant speed range scenario.

Speed (slope / no slope)
60km/h
60km/h
80km/h
80km/h

(slope)
(no slope)
(slope)
(no slope)

0.3

b
a

0.2

Range

b
c

0.1

260km
430km
196km
302km

0
0

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

time (s)

(b)
Battery current (A)
60

trajectory the vehicle is driven back to point a but following

the opposite way a b c a. This sequence
was repeated until the empty charge condition was attained
(DoDlimit = 0.95).
Figures 5b-5c represent the evolution of the State of
Charge (SoC = 1DoD) in a constant speed profile through
the 3D road test network. Though the EV has a constant
speed, the current is not constant, as can be seen in Fig. 5c.
In fact, as the cycles are repeated, the SoC decreases due to
the energy drained from the battery pack. The battery pack
voltage also decreases (Fig. 3), which explains the fact that,
to achieve the same required power to maintain a constant
speed value, an increase is required in the consumed current.
This happens even in zero slope road bc segment. In the
first pass of the vehicle in the direction a b the current
measured at b point is 57A, and in the corresponding point
at the last pass the current is 59A as highlighted in Fig. 5c.
Table IV summarizes results for two situations considering
the route defined in Fig. 5c: (a) with slopes as specified in
the figure, and (b) with all three segments being horizontal.
In both cases it was considered that the vehicle carried a
passenger with 75kg weight. In zero slope and low speed
tests, the two major influence influencing range are the
rolling resistance and the aerodynamic drag. The EV1 range
at constant speed of 72 km/h reported in [16] is 355 km
which is in the range of obtained values in our zero-slope
tests (430 km for 60 km/h and 302 km for 89 km/h). The
regenerative breaking effect is clearly observed in the Fig.
5b in the road segments with negative slope.
Finally, the model was applied on a simulates subnetwork of the Coimbra city. The target area, a circuit of
approximately 8 km length, is illustrated in Fig. 6. The

50

40

30

20
b

10

(c)

Fig. 5: (a) 3D road test network, (b) evolution of the SoC

along the complete test, and (c) zoomed and overlaid currents
at the first (red) and last (blue) passes of the vehicle over the
a b c segment.

starting/ending point of the circuit is represented by a red

dot on the map. The maximum difference of altitude in the
covered circuit is 54.4 m. As shown in Fig. 7, the circuit is
diversified in terms of altitude allowing exploration of the
regenerative breaking characteristic of the vehicle. For this
study, one EV was injected at the starting location, and run
along the route specified by the arrows. There was no other
traffic along the circuit. To prove the effect of altitudes over
energy consumption, two different tests were performed:
1) Using original map, with the true altitudes;
2) Using a planified map, with no altitude differences.
Both simulation tests consisted of one complete turn along
the circuit. The corresponding energy results are shown in
232

way the battery discharges over time (with charging periods

occurring in negative slope segments or vehicle deceleration
periods). The EV consumption model was validated with two
types of well-known driving cycles and in constant speed
mode. This model has been also applied on a sub-network
area of Coimbra city. With the enhancements reported in the
paper, SUMO framework was endowed with suitable tools
that allow large scale simulation of electric mobility systems.
R EFERENCES
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colony optimization for traffic dispersion routing, 13th International
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683688, Sep 2010.
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789794, Sep 2010.
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for carbon foot print analysis of electric vehicles, 13th International
IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), pp.
949954, Sep 2010.
[5] M. Sghaier, H. Zgaya, S. Hammadi, and C. Tahon, A distributed
dijkstras algorithm for the implementation of a real time carpooling
service with an optimized aspect on siblings, 13th International IEEE
Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), pp. 795800,
Sep 2010.
[6] Y. Chen, M. G. H. Bell, and K. Bogenberger, Reliable pretrip
multipath planning and dynamic adaptation for a centralized road
navigation system, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation
Systems, vol. 8, Issue: 1, pp. 1420, 2007.
[7] H. T. Masaya Yoshikawa, Car navigation system based on hybrid
genetic algorithm, World Congress on Computer Science and Information Engineering, 2009.
[8] B. Chakraborty and R. C. Chen, Fuzzy-genetic approach for incorporation of drivers requirement for route selection in a car navigation
system, IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, pp. 1645
1649, 2009.
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route planning using genetic algorithms in path computation algorithms, European Journal of Scientific Research, vol. 25 (3), pp. 463
468, 2009.
[10] SUMO, Simulation of urban mobility, http://sourceforge.net/
apps/mediawiki/sumo/, January 2010, retrieved 2010-03-18.
(www.dlr.de/ts).
[11] J. Larminie and J. Lowry, Electric Vehicle Technology Explained.
John Wiley & Sons, 2003.
[12] S. Krau, Microscopic modeling of traffic flow: Investigation of
collision free vehicle dynamics, Ph.D. dissertation, Mathematisches
Institut, Universitat zu Koln, 1998.
[13] S. Krau, P. Wagner, and C. Gawron, Metastable states in a microscopic model of traffic flow, Phys. Rev. E, vol. 55, no. 5, pp.
55975602, May 1997.
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Fig. 6: Road circuit simulated (source by Google).

Altitude profile
80

70

circuit end

Altitude (m)

60
circuit
beginning
50

40

30

20

1000

2000

3000

4000
5000
Position (m)

6000

7000

8000

Fig. 7: Altitude profile along the circuit.

TABLE V: Range in urban scenario, one cycle

one passenger (75kg)
top speed
60km/h (3D)
60km/h (2D)
80km/h (3D)
80km/h (2D)

DoD
3.27%
2.15%
4.21%
3.12%

Table V. As can be seen, the altitude significantly influences

consumption. The energy is drained differently depending
on the altitude profile of the circuit: with altitudes the
consumption is higher then with the flat map.
V. C ONCLUSION
A simulation framework for electric vehicles in terms
of energy consumption has been presented. SUMO traffic
simulator was enhanced with components that allow 3D
simulation of EV energy consumption. EV performance
depends on the terrain slope, with a direct impact on the
233