Over the past several years, new recommended practices for testing plug-in vehicles have been developed by SAE standards committees. At first only proprietary or prototype vehicles were available to validate new procedures. However, with the recent availability of Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, these test procedures were put to the test in Argonne?s National Laboratory?s dynamometer test facility. Procedures for the Volt were according to the SAE J1711 procedures. The Leaf was tested according to procedures still under development in the SAE J1634 task force. Identified were aspects of the tests that were successful and areas where more development is needed. As described in SAE J2841, the Volt results were analyzed using a ?utility factor? to estimate in-use expectations of electric-only miles. In this presentation, a similar analysis approach is applied for the Leaf to estimate the electric-only mile fraction comparing round trips within the electric range compared to longer trips that must be taken by an alternative (presumably gasoline-powered) vehicle.

Presenter
Michael Duoba, Argonne National Laboratory