Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

There are many positive reasons for the ever increasing electrification of vehicles in the form of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in HEVs (PHEVs), and battery or pure electric vehicles (BEVs). Unfortunately, for pragmatic, policy, and behavioural reasons electrified vehicles sales are generally low to moderate. At the centre of all electrified vehicle benefits and drawbacks is the vehicle battery. Much battery research exists and continues but mostly at the cell and lab level. At the module (multiple cells) and pack (multiple modules) level the research is far less, and much of what does exists tends to remain confidential within industry for business competition reasons. One clearly deficient area in the literature is with regards to vehicle battery ‘pack’ internal temperature and lifetime degradation behaviour, and its impact on electrified vehicle model-based design. A second literature deficiency is effective approaches to convincing the vehicle consumer on the benefits of electrified vehicles.

The overall objective of this research program is to advance, both technically and consumer desirability wise, hybrid electric vehicle's (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicle's (PHEVs), pure electric or battery electric vehicle's (BEVs) powertrains in order to move society closer to a sustainable transportation future. Specifically, this research program focusses (i) on understanding and improving vehicle battery life and utilization through understanding vehicle battery thermal characteristics and degradation, and (ii) on developing a method to increase public support for increasing the electrification of vehicles through the development of a mobile toxic emissions multi-pathway human health risk assessment framework.

There are three research program main challenges proposed for Discovery Grant funding: The first challenge fills a void in the literature and research tools as it seeks to extend the applicant’s recently productive physics-based 3-D multi-layered battery pouch thermal modelling to include degradation, and up-sized to vehicle battery modules and packs. The second challenge addresses post battery warranty needs of the consumer and supports the emerging vehicle battery second-use industry by better understanding vehicle battery degradation through experiments and transferring this understanding to PHEV control optimization strategies geared towards extending battery life, and correspondingly second-use value. The third challenge will assist vehicle purchasing consumers, city traffic planners, and government decision makers by creating a novel, paradigm shifting, mobile toxic emissions human health risk assessment that seeks to inform, by personalizing, vehicle emissions down to the vehicle one drives, the driving routes one takes, and where one lives and works.