Automated Vehicles – Powertrain Challenges and Concepts

Authors

Dr. Jochen Schwarzer, Dr. Christian Thulfaut, Dr. Dirk Hofmann, Florian Stratz, Dr. Rainer Gasper, Steffen Strauss, Dr. Sebastian Käfer, Dr. Volker Drewes, Dr. Norbert Müller,
Robert Bosch GmbH, Stuttgart

Summary

Autonomous driving will change vehicle architectures in many ways and impact upon powertrain will be significant. Some of the new requirements that need to be addressed are: reliability and fault tolerance, total cost/system costs as well as additional energy
demands. An optimal powertrain concept will depend heavily on whether or not the vehicle is a privately owned car, offering optional automation in certain driving situations, or if the vehicle is a fully-automated, driverless, publicly-shared means of transportation.

The two use cases are refined further including one, a privately owned car with a highway pilot (indicating an automation level 3 or 4) and two, a shared, urban, autonomous taxi (implying the level 4 or 5). For both the basic needs and requirements are summarized. Different powertrain concepts are evaluated regarding their
feasibility, with special emphasis on the comparison of total cost of ownership and the comparison of vehicle total energy consumption in real life, as well as on the development effort and capability of fault tolerance. Changes in relevant driving profiles will be significant and have been studied by traffic flow simulations of different mobility scenarios.

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