2022 VI-GRADE ZERO PROTOTYPES SUMMIT

Recently, the automotive industry has been moving towards more electrified vehicles as automakers are pushed by tighter regulations and more conscious consumers. In addition, innovative powertrain systems are constantly being developed meaning high potential to better current products every model year. Traditionally, the industry approach to new powertrain systems relies heavily in prototyping and testing. That often translates to huge cost and time of development. Furthermore, that results in a lack of flexibility, since once a component is prototyped, it can only be modified to a certain degree. For that reason, there has been increasing virtualization and digital twinning. Moreover, real-time simulation tools allowed the migration of much of the experimental testing to driving simulation. Through driving simulation, engineers can easily swap between powertrain components and topologies, rapidly implement new control strategies, analyse their impacts to drivability, and consumption performance. All that in realistic and diverse scenarios, accounting for the driver perception. This presentation shows how the MARCdrive lab is equipped to tackle those tasks, accelerating vehicle electrification. It shows a modular powertrain model, that converse with a static driving simulator, a NVH simulator, and a chassis dynamometer. The lab is located at the McMaster Automotive Resource Centre in Hamilton, Canada and the simulators are provided by VI-grade.