Development of Meta-Heuristic Optimization Based Control of Redesigned VW Crafter Hybrid Vehicle

This paper uses the MATLAB/Simulink/Simscape environment to evaluate the performance of a conventional Volkswagen (VW) Crafter, equipped with a 6-speed manual gearbox and a 2.0 Turbocharged Direct Injection Common Rail Diesel (TDI CR) engine, which is converted into a hybrid vehicle. A parallel hybrid vehicle powered by a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) is compared to the conventional version. A genetic algorithm (GA) is applied to tune the classical PID controller to optimize energy consumption. A novel methodology is also introduced based on the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) method, leveraging an online data acquisition (DAQ) system integrated into the vehicle’s Controller Area Network (CAN Bus) system. The acquired CAN bus data is analyzed using LabVIEW and Net CAN plus 110 hardware. The simulated vehicle demonstrates better performance than the real vehicle based on the comparison between the simulation and experimental results. The transformed hybrid vehicle achieves 75.11% reduction in fuel consumption and an energy efficiency of 84.62%.