Concept for Generating Energy Demand in Electric Vehicles with a Model Based Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is well written, and it is very interesting to see the performance of the simulation. I think integrating openweather API and other services adds to a good scenario. Also, utilizing components suspension, chassis etc. simulated as blackbox models is an interesting approach and will be great to see more in the realms of simulating the energy consumption of vehicles on different routes. 

It would also be a good future work to add in more parameters to create a more robust model.

Author Response

Dear editors and reviewers,

First of all, the authors would like to thank the editor and the reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions, which certainly helped us to improve the paper. Specific as well as general changes were made based on the editor and the reviewers' comments and are specifically highlighted in blue in the revised manuscript.

Below is a detailed explanation of the changes made to the manuscript in a point-by-point manner.

General Comment:

The paper is well written, and it is very interesting to see the performance of the simulation. I think integrating openweather API and other services adds to a good scenario. Also, utilizing components suspension, chassis etc. simulated as blackbox models is an interesting approach and will be great to see more in the realms of simulating the energy consumption of vehicles on different routes.

Response:

Thank you for appreciating the main contributions and the research scope of our work. Firstly, we appreciate very much your careful review work which certainly helped us to improve the manuscript.

Comment #1:

It would also be a good future work to add in more parameters to create a more robust model.

Response:

Thanks for your helpful suggestions. In future work, depending on the vehicle used, we will add more detailed parameters to the model. The idea of making the model more robust has been exactly our intention for the next steps in this project and we are therefore very pleased to hear that the reviewer’s interest also goes in this direction.

Finally, we sincerely hope that we have managed to address the required revisions both in this document and the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper aims to build a vehicle model which could describe the energy consumption. In my opinion, vehicle modelling is the fundamental work of other research such as advanced or intelligent energy management strategies, batter SOC and life span estimation. If this paper could propose an accurate vehicle model for the field, it could be a significant contribution. However, the work presented in this paper doesn’t prove that this model is good model.

Firstly, all the battery, capacitor and motor models used here are very general models which are popularly used by other researchers.  This paper can’t take this for credit. Thus, this paper needs more novel work on the vehicle model or help to get accurate model parameters. Secondly, the results can’t prove the accuracy of the model. The results compare the simulation and experiment energy demand which are close. However, the results only show the final energy demand. How about during the process? You should also present the battery power, capacity power motor torque and so on during the whole driving process.

In conclusion, this work wants to take the vehicle modelling as the contribution, which is ok, but the work presented doesn’t sufficiently support it. My advice for the revision is: please improve your model or get accurate model parameters by experiments (Since you have the vehicle, providing accurate parameters are also significant contribution). If you think the model is already good enough with accurate parameters, please show and compare the simulation and experiment results during the whole driving process, including the battery power, capacity power, SOC, motor power, motor torque and so on. Only with detailed vehicle states during the whole process, the model fidelity can be proved.

Author Response

Dear editors and reviewers,
First of all, the authors would like to thank the editor and the reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions, which certainly helped us to improve the paper. Specific as well as general changes were made based on the editor and the reviewers' comments and are specifically highlighted in blue in the revised manuscript. 

General Comment:
This paper aims to build a vehicle model which could describe the energy consumption. In my opinion, vehicle modelling is the fundamental work of other research such as advanced or intelligent energy management strategies, batter SOC and life span estimation. If this paper could propose an accurate vehicle model for the field, it could be a significant contribution. However, the work presented in this paper doesn’t prove that this model is good model.

Response:
Thank you for your valuable comments. Firstly, we appreciate very much your careful review work which certainly helped us to improve the manuscript.
As you have accurately described, the basic idea of this work was to contribute to the field of simulation of energy consumption of electric vehicles. Our focus is more on the use of realistic route data and information instead of the previously used synthetic driving cycles (WLTP, NEFC, etc.). The presentation and use of our Route Generating Algorithm and the route data generated with it, consisting of the real route data and the additional route information (weather, gradient, traffic, etc.) present this new approach. The combination of the vehicle model presented here, and the use of the realistic route data represent the contribution to the generation of realistic energy consumption results by means of a simulation approach. The vehicle model presented here, consisting of the black box models, and the components relevant for us, represented by the white box models, are to be taken as representative here.

Attached is a detailed explanation of the changes made to the manuscript in a point-by-point manner.

Finally, we sincerely hope that we have managed to address the required revisions both in this document and the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The topic is very actual and interesting. The reading is very fast and clear. The structure of the work is very good and accurate. However, just only some comments:

• Please capitalize the first letters (e.g.: Energy Management System (EMS) end not EMS)
• Please improve the literature, e.g. by adding these papers:
  
  • Viola, F., Longo, M., Zaninelli, D., Romano, P., Miceli, R. How is the spread of the Electric Vehicles? RTSI 2015. DOI: 10.1109/RTSI.2015.7325137
  • Viola, F., et al. Replacement of Vehicle Fleet with EVs Using PV Energy (2015) International Journal of Renewable Energy Research, 5 (4), pp. 1146-1153.
  • Viola, F., Longo, M., On the strategies for the diffusion of EVs: Comparison between Norway and Italy (2017) International Journal of Renewable Energy Research, 7 (3), pp. 1376-1382.
  • etc.
• Is there a specific reason on the adoption of BMWi3? Please make it more explicit in the text. could this work be adopted for any type of electric vehicle? if yes make it explicit if no motivate this (obviously we change the parameters but are they this?).
• Can you add any comments for Figure 8?
• The abbreviation is not necessary in the work. All acronyms are well known in academia and companies.

Author Response

Dear editors and reviewers,
First of all, the authors would like to thank the editor and the reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions, which certainly helped us to improve the paper. Specific as well as general changes were made based on the editor and the reviewers' comments and are specifically highlighted in blue in the revised manuscript. 

General Comment:
The topic is very actual and interesting. The reading is very fast and clear. The structure of the work is very good and accurate.

Response:
Thank you for appreciating the main contributions and the research scope of our work. Firstly, we appreciate very much your careful review work which certainly helped us to improve the manuscript. Secondly, we are also very pleased that the structure of the work has appealed to you.

Attached is a detailed explanation of the changes made to the manuscript in a point-by-point manner.

Finally, we sincerely hope that we have managed to address the required revisions both in this document and the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I would like to thank the authors to carefully consider my suggestions and concerns. I’m convinced that the modelling and route selection are acceptable now.

The concern of the results presentation is still there. In your response, you say “We therefore decided against presenting the energy flow from the simulation without the corresponding curve from the real measurement, because without the comparison we believed it would not be meaningful enough”. I agree with that. So, do you mean in the experiment, only the energy consumption is measurable? If so, I would suggest you to use more sensors to measure more states of the vehicle (Vehicle speed, Electric motor power, Battery power…) and compare them with the model.

It is not enough to say the model represents the experiment with only a final result. The process could be totally different even the final results are same. Since it is easy to measure all the vehicle states in simulation, is that possible to measure more vehicle states during experiment? I can’t agree with the very insufficient results presentation.

Lastly, in the figure of “energy-distance”, The energy scale is 10^-4 kWh? What is this energy parameter belonging to? Why it is so small?

Author Response

Dear editors and reviewers,
First of all, the authors would like to thank the editor and the reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions, which certainly helped us to improve the paper. Specific as well as general changes were made based on the editor and the reviewers' comments and are specifically highlighted in blue in the revised manuscript.

General Comment:

I would like to thank the authors to carefully consider my suggestions and concerns. I’m convinced that the modelling and route selection are acceptable now.

Response:

On behalf of all authors, I thank you very much for your time and efforts and for appreciating the main contributions and the research scope of our work. Through the very detailed and good comments and questions we can improve the paper and thus the actual work.

Attached is a detailed explanation of the changes made to the manuscript in a point-by-point manner.

Finally, we sincerely hope that we have managed to address the required revisions both in this document and the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf