EV hybrid battery with integrated multilevel neutral-point-clamped interfacing and lossless intermodule state-of-charge balancing

Abstract

The battery is at the heart of the electric vehicle and determines many of its key performance features. Therefore, an optimized design of the battery is critical. On the one hand, the design of batteries based on a single battery cell leads in many cases to oversized batteries in terms of energy or power, due to the diversity of requirements of the different electric vehicles. On the other hand, the use of a custom cell for each vehicle, optimized for its particular requirements, is not economically viable. Instead, hybrid batteries, combining only two battery cell chemistries, with distinct particular strengths, such as high specific energy or high specific power, offer an opportunity to cover a wide range of vehicle battery specifications while avoiding oversizing and dispersion in the cells to be employed. [...]