Three-Wheel Vehicle VS Four-Wheel Vehicle

A three-wheel vehicle has a possible weight advantage over a conventional 4-wheel platform thus, for an electric vehicle, this would translate to more range using the 4-wheel battery pack or equal range using a smaller battery pack. This possibility justified a comparative study of 3- and 4-wheel vehicle dynamics and how to make the two platforms as similar as possible. A collaborative project between Hyundai and UC Davis was initiated April 2022.

The main question to be answered was, “Can a three-wheel vehicle perform dynamically identically to a 4-wheel vehicle while not sacarficing the interior and exterior design?”  The research team here at UC Davis has been working with Hyundai for more than 13 years on various vehicle dynamics and controls topics. This current project started with the development of low-order bond graph models of the 4-wheel and 3-wheel platforms. This allowed a comparison of the fundamental difference between the two. We then introduced practical actuators to change the dynamics of the 3-wheel vehicle such that it performs almost identically to the 4-wheel vehicle.  It is hoped that the results of this study will assist Hyundai in deciding whether to pursue a 3-wheel vehicle prototype.

6 DoFs model for both vehicles are created using Bond Graph with proposed control components for MATLAB/Simulink simulations. Further research on this project can be investigations on how much energy can be saved with a 3-wheeler design pairing with energy recoverable actuators.

If interested, here's the report for this project with all the details: