EV Charge Detection from Plug-In Bus Traffic Events
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Solution Overview
Problem
Commercial vehicle fleets face challenges in determining fuel and energy usage efficiency due to the complexity and diversity of vehicle activities, making it difficult to collect and analyze data effectively.
Innovation Solution
A vehicle gateway device is attached to each fleet vehicle to gather operation data, including location data, and transmit aggregated metric data to a management server, which analyzes the data to determine fuel/energy efficiencies, safety measurements, and generates interactive graphical user interfaces for reporting and alerts.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If vehicle diagnostic data is collected at high frequency in real-time, then measurement precision and data accuracy are improved, but data volume increases making transmission and processing difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential vehicle diagnostic parameters needed for charge determination (voltage, current, temperature, state of charge) from the complete set of vehicle bus data, filtering out redundant information while maintaining measurement precision for charge-related metrics
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the continuous high-frequency vehicle data stream into discrete charge determination events, processing data only when charging conditions are detected or when specific charge-related parameters change, thereby reducing overall data transmission volume while maintaining accuracy for charge determination
2Measurement precision
If comprehensive vehicle activity data is collected to determine fuel and energy efficiency, then measurement precision is improved, but device complexity increases due to the diversity of data sources
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a universal data collection approach using the existing vehicle bus interface to gather multiple types of data (charging parameters, vehicle operation data, location data) through a single gateway device, reducing system complexity while maintaining comprehensive measurement capability for fuel and energy efficiency determination
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a management server as an intermediary that receives, aggregates, and processes data from multiple vehicle gateway devices, simplifying the architecture by centralizing complex analysis functions while allowing individual gateway devices to remain relatively simple data collection points
3Loss of information
If data is transmitted continuously from vehicle gateway to management server, then information availability is improved, but loss of time and energy increases due to continuous transmission
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements periodic data transmission where the vehicle gateway device transmits charge determination data and vehicle metric data at defined intervals or when specific charging events occur, rather than continuously, reducing transmission time and energy consumption while maintaining adequate data availability for fleet management
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary processing and aggregation of vehicle data at the gateway device before transmission, preparing charge determination results and metric summaries in advance, so that when data is transmitted to the management server, it is already organized and ready for analysis, reducing the time needed for both transmission and subsequent processing
Data Source
AI summary
A diagnostic service is selectively started at opportune times, such as when the electrical vehicle is initially plugged in. When the electrical vehicle is turned off, there may not be any messages being sent on the communication bus since most vehicle electronic controllers are disabled to conserve power. But, when someone plugs in a charger, there is a surge of bus traffic for a short period of time. The system parses through the bus traffic and looks for a particular communication bus address. The presence of this address can be used as an indicator for an opportune time to start the diagnostic service to confirm whether the electric vehicle is charging or not and to log the state of charge of the electric vehicle.