Electric or hybrid vehicle battery pack voltage measurement functional assessment and redundancy

• US 9,931,960 B2
• Filed: 09/11/2015
• Issued: 04/03/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 09/11/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Original Assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Ford Motor Company)
• Inventors: Tabatowski-Bush, Benjamin A., Loftus, Michael Edward, Wang, Xu
• Primary Examiner(s): Mott, Genna M
• Application Number:
  US14/851,254
• Publication Number:
  US 20170072811A1
• Time in Patent Office: 935 Days
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 2240/547 Voltage
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 3/12 Recording operating variables ; Monitoring of operating variables
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 58/21 having the same nominal voltage
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 31/006 on road vehicles, e.g. automobiles or trucks testing of ignition installations peculiar to internal combustion engines F02P17/00
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 31/3835 involving only voltage measurements
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 31/396 Acquisition or processing of data for testing or for monitoring individual cells or groups of cells within a battery
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 35/00 Testing or calibrating of apparatus covered by the other groups of this subclass
• CPC Class Codes: Y02T 10/70 Energy storage systems for electromobility, e.g. batteries

Abstract

Systems and methods for measuring voltage of a battery pack for an electrified vehicle, such as an electric or hybrid vehicle, include a battery having internal circuits that measure pack voltage and individual cell voltages, an electric machine powered by the battery to propel the vehicle via an external circuit that measures the pack voltage, and a processor programmed to publish the pack voltage to a vehicle network based on a first internal circuit voltage in response to a voltage differential among the internal circuits being less than a threshold and based on the individual cell voltages otherwise. The published pack voltage may be used by one or more battery or vehicle controllers to control various battery and vehicle functions including engine starting in a hybrid vehicle and battery charging and discharging, for example.

Claims

1. A vehicle, comprising:

a traction battery pack having a high voltage bus and a plurality of individual battery cells, the traction battery pack including a plurality of internal circuits that provides a corresponding plurality of independent internal measurements of traction battery pack voltage;

a plurality of external circuits external to the traction battery pack and coupled to the high voltage bus providing a corresponding plurality of independent external measurements of the traction battery pack voltage;

an electric machine powered by the traction battery pack via one of the plurality of external circuits to propel the vehicle; and

a controller in communication with the plurality of internal circuits and the plurality of external circuits and programmed to publish a pack voltage to a vehicle network, the pack voltage corresponding to a first independent internal measurement in response to a voltage differential among all of the independent internal measurements being less than a threshold, a second independent internal measurement in response to the voltage differential exceeding the threshold, and a statistical measure of the independent internal and external measurements in response to any of the internal measurements being invalid.

2. The vehicle of claim 1, the plurality of external circuits comprising:

an inverter circuit;

an electric air conditioning (eAC) circuit; and

a DC/DC converter circuit.

3. The vehicle of claim 1, the plurality of internal circuits comprising a battery pack voltage measuring circuit that measures traction battery pack voltage across the plurality of individual battery cells.

4. The vehicle of claim 1, the plurality of internal circuits comprising a plurality of battery monitoring integrated circuits each measuring voltage across a corresponding group of the individual battery cells.

5. The vehicle of claim 4, the controller further programmed to combine voltages from the plurality of battery monitoring integrated circuits to determine one of the plurality of independent internal measurements of the traction battery pack voltage.

6. The vehicle of claim 1, each of the plurality of external circuits publishing a corresponding one of the plurality of independent external measurements to the vehicle network.

7. The vehicle of claim 1, the plurality of internal circuits comprising:

a positive branch leakage detection circuit measuring the traction battery pack voltage from a most positive of the individual battery cells to vehicle ground; and

a negative branch leakage detection circuit measuring the traction battery pack voltage from a most negative of the individual battery cells to vehicle ground.

8. The vehicle of claim 7, one of the plurality of independent internal measurements being based on voltage across the positive and negative branch leakage detection circuits.

9. The vehicle of claim 1, the statistical measure comprising a median value of the internal and external measurements.

10. The vehicle of claim 1, the controller further programmed to store a diagnostic code in an associated non-transitory storage medium in response to the voltage differential being above the threshold and a second voltage differential among all of the independent external measurements exceeding an associated threshold.

11. A vehicle comprising:

a battery having internal circuits that measure pack voltage and individual cell voltages;

an electric machine powered by the battery to propel the vehicle via an external circuit that measures the pack voltage; and

a processor programmed to publish the pack voltage based on a first internal circuit voltage in response to a voltage differential among the internal circuits being less than a threshold and based on the individual cell voltages otherwise.

12. The vehicle of claim 11 further comprising a second external circuit that measures the pack voltage, the processor further programmed to publish the pack voltage based on a statistical measure of central tendency of the pack voltage measurements from the internal circuits and the external circuits.

13. The vehicle of claim 12, the processor programmed to store a diagnostic code in response to a voltage difference among the external circuits exceeding a second threshold.

14. The vehicle of claim 12, the processor programmed to publish the pack voltage based on a median value of the pack voltage measurements from the internal circuits and the external circuits in response to a voltage difference among the external circuits being below the second threshold.

15. The vehicle of claim 12, the second external circuit comprising one of an electric air conditioning (eAC) circuit and a DC/DC converter circuit.

16. The vehicle of claim 11, the external circuit publishing a pack voltage measurement to a vehicle network.

17. A control method for an electric vehicle having a traction battery coupled to an electric machine, comprising:

outputting, by a vehicle processor, a pack voltage to a vehicle network, the pack voltage based on internal voltage measurements in response to a voltage differential among the internal voltage measurements being less than a threshold, and

based on a statistical function of both the internal voltage measurements and published voltage measurements from external circuits otherwise.

18. The control method of claim 17, wherein the internal voltage measurements used in the statistical function comprise an internal voltage measurement obtained by summing of internal measurements associated with individual battery cells.

19. The control method of claim 17, wherein the pack voltage is based on a median of the internal voltage measurements and the published voltage measurements from the external circuits in response to a voltage differential of the published voltage measurements from the external circuits being below an associated threshold.