How Digital Twins Accelerate E-Mobility Ecosystem Innovation

Digital twin technology is changing how the automotive industry designs and tests products and solutions for electromobility (e-mobility). With pressure to develop more energy-efficient batteries, and escalation in charging infrastructure development, digital twins can help bring new products to market quicker without compromising performance and safety standards conformance.

What’s the difference between an emulator and a simulator?

Digital twins have emerged as a popular technology topic, but the idea has foundations in emulation technology dating back to the early 1990s. Emulators imitate the behavior of one or more pieces of equipment, whether an integrated circuit or an entire piece, and have many applications.**** Before looking at emulation technologies applications, let’s review the differences between emulators and simulators (see Table 1). Although emulation and simulations are sometimes used interchangeably in engineering, they have distinct differences.

As an example of a device-under-test (DUT), consider a chip.

Simulation

Simulation depicts how the chip will perform once manufactured. The goal is to ensure the chip can perform under different states of variables such as memory, registry, and current program counters.

Emulation

Emulation means using hardware and/or software to simulate how a chip will function at near real-time speeds. By doing so, the designer can speed up the simulation process above and beyond the capabilities of traditional simulation. This ability is essential for high-performance chips like those used in power conversion across the e-mobility ecosystem.

A system that mimics the exact behavior of another system

A system able to mimic another system to a certain degree

Strictly abides by the parameters and rules of the emulated system

May not follow all inherent rules of the system being simulated

Copies the behavior of systems

Models applications and events

Example: Game consoles

Example: Flight simulator

Table 1. Differences between an emulator and a simulator

Emulation technology has come a long way since its early days, evolving into digital twins that utilize powerful hardware and software for engineers to customize test parameters and emulate different equipment and test scenarios. Let’s look closer at how digital twins enable e-mobility development.

How a digital twin speeds up EV and EVSE testing despite various charging interfaces

According to a Reuters report, automakers plan to build 54 million battery electric vehicles in 2030. This represents over 50% of total vehicle production. For EV supply equipment (EVSE) suppliers, testing charging stations against all the new models is not feasible. Likewise, automotive makers face the challenge of ensuring their electric vehicles conform to differing charging standards worldwide. Testing their vehicles against varying charging stations worldwide is not practical.

There are charging station classifications, as shown in Table 2.

Level 1 - AC Slow Charge

Level 2 - AC Moderate Charge

Level 3 - DC Fast Charge

Slow
Least expensive
Mainly for overnight domestic charging.
Charge anywhere from a standard electrical outlet with 120 V

Charge small to medium-sized cars (24 kWh battery) in 4 to 6 hours
Standard AC wall chargers for home use when not in a hurry
Generate less heat than Level 3, making them better for the battery

Fast, charge a 24 kWh battery to 80% in 30 minutes or less
Raise the temperature of batteries, which may impact the performance of lithium-ion car batteries. External temperature affects charging time.

Table 2. Overview of typical EV charging types

Besides the differences between AC and DC electrical platforms, electric car makers and EVSE manufacturers must contend with interoperability and conformance to regulations as they attempt to market their products worldwide (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Examples of charging standards around the world. Emerging standards like CHAdeMO 3.0 (Chaoji) and Megawatt Charging System (MCS) will enable faster charging.

In the past, engineers conducted manual testing and connected individual car models to various charging stations, each featuring different standards. In today’s ever-changing market, this test strategy is no longer sufficient. Digital twins provide a solution, automating the tests for different EV charging interfaces against various EV supply equipment (EVSE) and checking the interoperability between each vehicle and charging station model (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Digital twin technology eliminates the need for real cars or charging stations when manufacturers test new products against different EVs or EVSEs.

Let’s look at two emulation setups used in today’s EV and EVSE design and test environments.

EV automakers use emulation to eliminate the need to connect to multiple charging stations

Figure 3 shows a high-power EV test system (center) with a liquid-cooled charging adapter that emulates DC charging infrastructure. The electricity for powering the emulated DC charging infrastructure comes from yet another emulator on the left. The carmaker can now emulate various high-power DC charging infrastructures up to 600 A in less time it takes than connecting the car to multiple charging stations.

Figure 3. Testing the electric car with a digital twin setup that emulates high-power DC charging.

How to use a digital twin to configure an electric vehicle to fit varying EV specifications

When testing a charging station design against different cars (Figure 4), a tester with a power supply can emulate an electric vehicle. The EV digital twin enables the engineer to configure the vehicle to the specifications of different electric cars.

Figure 4. Emulating different electric vehicles to test the EVSE on the left. This test setup allows functional, safety, interoperability, conformance, and durability testing of any EVSE product under development.

How a digital twin can overcome EV battery development and testing challenges

In addition to EV and charging stations, better and cheaper battery cells are vital to driving EV adoption. Many automakers have specialized teams working on EV energy storage and usage systems to meet these challenges.

Developing and testing new high-power EV batteries requires an intelligent battery management system (BMS). A BMS performs important safety, control, and regulation functions by monitoring voltage, current, temperature, and state-of-charge parameters. The BMS is also responsible for thermal, energy, cell balancing, and performance management. Engineers must also validate the BMS’s ability to execute all these functionalities to specification.

A digital twin environment can help engineers stress test their BMS during development. This BMS environment emulator can replicate the EV battery cells and emulate failures such as open or short circuits and different cell temperatures to test how the BMS responds to these events.

Digital twins and emulation: critical tools for validating EV product development and design

As the electric vehicle and charging infrastructure market grows, digital twins and e -mobility testing solutions will become indispensable to product development and design validation. Digital twins will ensure that their real-world counterparts meet industry conformance standards and realize the overarching goal of a greener and more sustainable transport ecosystem.

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