Power consumption simulations for electric vehicles

The past decades have seen a major expansion in discussions about the effects of greenhouse emissions to the environment, and the constant search for alternatives to lower the human footprint in the world. The transportation necessities of a connected world require an ever-growing power consumption, provided by different kinds of energy. In that context, the individual transportation modes are responsible for the biggest part of petroleum derivate consumption in the globe, being that way a major target for environmental initiatives. The conventional vehicles, currently mass adopted in every country, are being partially replaced with more ecological counterparts, with variable degree of hybridization, together with alternative sources, showing several benefits, but also having to surpass some challenges to become widely adopted. One of the major challenges for pure electric vehicles is the range availability and its dependence on the battery capacity and performance, that leads to the range anxiety phenomenon. Good power consumption models for those vehicles can lead to better consumption predictions, and better estimation of available range, that ultimately lead to greater adoption rates. Those models should be simply enough not to burden computational systems, but precise enough to fully represent the vehicle dynamics. Models should also depend on data easily extracted and be flexible, allowing utilization for more than one vehicle model.