Pragmatic optimal drive control strategy considering in-wheel motor efficiency and tire-slip energy dissipation for four-wheel independent-drive electric vehicles

• The battery energy-saving potential of DEDCs. • A pragmatic real-time control strategy for FWIDEVs. • Improvement for adaptability and complexity. • Analysis for different power loss sources during driving. Facing the problem of service life and range anxious induced by power battery of electric vehicle, four-wheel independent drive electric vehicle (FWIDEV) may become a hotspot for its higher efficiency and controllability. Also, most present vehicle energy strategies are difficult to apply in the current traffic environment due to their complex architecture or the dependence on global or future information. On the premise of meeting the driving needs, to better reduce the application complexity and battery energy consumption under driving conditions, a pragmatic real-time two-tier strategy (Hierarchical Dynamic Fuzzy Genetic Algorithm, HDFGA) for distributed electric drive chassis (DEDC) overdrive systems is proposed comprehensively cuts the battery drive power loss. Besides, an adaptive probabilities method and a dynamic weight adjustment method are adopted thus further improve both the practicability and the condition adaptability. In addition to other conditions, co-simulation results show that HDFGA further reduces about 5.0% more comprehensive energy loss under low adhesion conditions. Hardware&Driver-in-Loop (HDiL) tests with Data Recharge (DR) tests further verify the improvement in economic, dynamic and real-time performance under μ-change conditions.