Investigation of Range Extension of Personal Electric Mobility by Current-Limiting Mechanism

One of the major hurdles for adopting electric vehicles to the masses is their limited range per charge using their energy storage. This even applies to small personal electric transports such as electric scooters, where the relatively small battery size restricts the effective range of the vehicle. Multiple studies have been done to overcome this problem. While this research will attempt to implement a signal limiter from the user input to the control unit, this will reduce the current flow from the battery to the motor, thus in theory, reducing the overall power consumed by the motor, thereby extending the range of the vehicle. By using MATLAB-Simulink software, this study performs simulation of an electric scooter, along with a proposed current limiting mechanism. From the obtained results, it can be observed that proper selection of limit mechanism can increase the electric scooter's operating range, and this work is capable to serve as a benchmark for future conceptual and empirical electric mobility research.