An Energy-Efficient Lyapunov-Based Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Controller for Electric Vehicles

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Lyapunov-based cooperative adaptive cruise control method for electric vehicles that enhances energy efficiency and stability by considering real-world dynamics and V2V communication.

Contribution

It presents a novel third-order EV model and a practical energy-efficient CACC controller that reduces velocity fluctuations and improves energy savings in EV platoons.

Findings

Reduces velocity fluctuations in EV platoons.

Maintains string stability at lower headway times.

Improves energy efficiency by up to 38.5%.

Abstract

As electric vehicles (EVs) are increasingly adopted as platforms for connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), enhancing their energy efficiency becomes critical. With the emergence of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) offers improved traffic flow, safety, and energy efficiency by enabling real-time coordination among EVs. However, conventional CACC algorithms neglected acceleration and regenerative braking dynamics in their implementation. To address this gap, this paper proposes a third-order dynamic model for EVs which has been derived from real-world experimental data. We also propose a novel, practical, and energy-efficient Lyapunov-based CACC controller explicitly designed for EV platoons. The proposed controller is requiring lower control gains while ensuring string stability and energy efficiency. To validate its effectiveness, we conduct both simulation and experimental environments, demonstrating that our approach reduces velocity fluctuations, maintains string stability at lower headway times, and improves energy efficiency of the CACC platoon by up to 38.5% compared to a baseline CACC.