Development of Traction Unit for 2-motor Driven Electric Vehicle

This paper describes a development of traction unit for 2-motor driven electric vehicle (EV). The traction unit is consisted with an interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM), a reduction gear and an inverter for electric vehicle that is driven by 2 motors without differential gear. For traction unit, prototype IPMSM and inverter have been developed. The IPMSM was designed by CAD program that was developed with both equivalent circuit method and FEM. Also the inverter was developed to drive 2 motors with 6 legs IGBT switches in a control board. The vector control algorithm was implemented with maximum torque control method in the constant torque region and field weakening control method in the constant power region considering inverter capacity. To verify that the traction unit is more high efficiency and has more high power density than a traction unit with induction motor with the same power, we would like to show the results about the design and analysis of the IPMSM and the experiment results about the traction unit.