Predictive Thermal Management Strategies for Battery Electric Vehicles in the CEP Industry

The courier express parcel service industry (CEP industry) has experienced significant changes in recent years due to increasing parcel volume. Similar to the parcel volume, the number of vehicles is growing. Therefore, the fleets of CEP service providers are particularly in the focus of the public and should contribute to the reduction of emissions. Moreover, there is an increasing interest in regulating the use of internal combustion engine vehicles by imposing stricter exhaust emission standards and transit restrictions in metropolitan areas. Nevertheless, the electrification progress in the CEP industry is slow because of the low electric range, the limited vehicle availability and high acquisition costs. An opportunity to increase the electric range is the optimization of the thermal management strategy by predictive data of the future driving task. This paper investigates the CEP usage behavior with a focus on thermal management and identifies exploitable potentials of predictive strategies. For this purpose, the metropolitan CEP usage behavior is discussed and the influence on the thermal management system is investigated. The evaluation shows that thermal management energy consumption accounts for a significant share of the total consumption, up to 50% at an ambient temperature of 0 °C. Predictive thermal management strategies are evaluated by a potential analysis for their practicability in battery electric CEP vehicles. The results show that predictive battery conditioning for maximum regenerative braking and predictive thermal energy storage have high potential for increasing electric range and thermal comfort in battery electric CEP vehicles.