AC Drive System with 4 In-Wheel Motor for High Performance Electric Vehicle

Abstract

The history of electric vehicle is very long. Many kind of electric vehicles were developed and used practically. In Japan, from 1971 to 1976 so called big project for EV sponsored by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry developed epoch-making EVs for that age. However, former electric motor vehicles were not comparable with gasoline-driven vehicles as regards performance and cost, and infrastructure like battery chargers were not provided. These are the reason why electric vehicles never came into widespread use. Recently in the world, many projects are developing electric vehicles because environment on earth are recognized as the most important problem.
In order to change the conventional image of electric vehicles, we have, in accordance with new concepts, undertaken the development of a high-performance electric motor vehicle. It was named as the IZA. The performance of IZA are as follows, maximum speed is 176km/h, range per one charge is 548km for a constant speed of 40km/h, and the acceleration from 0 to 400m is 18 second. It's performance and characteristics are comparable with those of gasoline-driven vehicles. Characteristics of this vehicle are:
(1) Four (4) motors are employed, and they drive wheels directly without mechanical gear.
(2) Motors are synchronous motors with permanent magnets which are made by samariumcobalt. The motors are placed inside of wheels.
(3) Controlled current inverters are employed for each motors.
(4) Type of batteries are nickel cadmium, they are divided to two parts and placed in front and rear of the vehicle respectively.
This paper presents the drive system of the electric vehicle.