Increasing the Efficiency of Electric Vehicle Drives
with Supercapacitors in Power Supply
Mykola Ostroverkhov
Department of Theoretical Electrical Engineering
National Technical University of Ukraine «Ihor Sikorsky Kyiv
Polytechnic Institute»
Kyiv, Ukraine
E-mail: n.ostroverkhov@hotmail.com
Abstract—The electric vehicles are considered one of the
most fast-growing industries today. Their efficiency exceeds
the efficiency of internal combustion engines, but it can be
improved even more. The power supply – Li-Ion accumulator
– provides significant heat losses due to its internal resistance.
Connecting supercapacitors in-parallel to the accumulator
battery can decrease these losses. This paper shows that
efficiency of such connection depends on the supercapacitor
capacitance and the rational value of capacitance, providing
minimum energy consumption, exists. During the study the
modernized system of power supply distribution for pause
recharging of supercapacitors has been proposed. This system
provides additional energy economy without implementing
different components to the electric drive. The study shows
that the tendency of increasing the efficiency of electric vehicle
drives works for high-voltage power supply as well as for low
voltage ones with the implementation of a DC-DC voltage
converter.
Keywords—electric vehicle, electric drive, supercapacitor,
induction motor.
I. INTRODUCTION
In modern day transport more and more electric vehicles
(EV) of different types can be seen each day: electric cars,
electric buses, electric scooters, electric bikes etc. The
reasons of increasing the amount of EV on the roads lie in
both ecology and their efficiency. Thus despite being more
expensive to buy, EV consume less energy and are cheaper
in exploitation. The main reason for this is that electric
motors have much greater efficiency then internal
combustion engines. However, the energy consumption of
EV is defined not only by the efficiency of electric motor
alone but by the electric drive itself, and significant part in it
takes the power supply that’s usually represented with Li-Ion
accumulators. These accumulators have big internal
resistance leading to additional heat losses in the electric
drive. One way to improve the efficiency of the system is to
connect supercapacitors that have lesser resistance in-parallel
to the accumulator. That means that including additional
element can result in decreasing of power consumption for
the whole EV. That is why the study of the efficiency of
electric vehicle drives with supercapacitors in power supply
is the actual modern day task.
II. THE OBJECT OF STUDY
The object of study is the electric vehicle drive with
independent power supply.
The most commonly used source of energy in EV is Li-
Ion accumulator battery. Such accumulators have the most
energy density of all which means one can drive the most
possible distance with the same weight of the battery. These
XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE
Danylo Trinchuk
Department of Theoretical Electrical Engineering
National Technical University of Ukraine «Ihor Sikorsky Kyiv
Polytechnic Institute»
Kyiv, Ukraine
E-mail: d.trinchuk@gmail.com
accumulators, however, have some significant drawbacks:
they have high resistance resulting in high heat losses, they
are sensitive to high peak currents, and they have limited
amount of recharges they can endure. The supercapacitors,
on the other hand, have small resistance, are tolerable to high
peak currents, and are almost limitless to the recharging, but
the energy density of supercapacitors is not high enough.
Thus the connection of accumulators and supercapacitors in
parallel is a prominent object to study.
As for the electromechanical energy converters there are
a couple of different types of electric motors to choose from:
permanent-magnet synchronous motor, induction motor,
brushless DC electric motor, switched reluctance motor [1].
All of these types of motors have their advantages and
disadvantages and can be chosen for different EV. For the
purposes of the study the induction motor with squirrel-
caged rotor (IM) was chosen.
III. RESEARCH OF EXISTING STUDIES ON THE SUBJECT
The idea of using the supercapacitors in-parallel with
accumulators was proposed in many different papers. In the
study [2] authors studied the effect of such connection on the
accumulator, but only the linear load was used, neglecting
the peculiarities of electromechanical power converter. The
research [3] has exhibited the effectiveness of such
connection while working on an electric motor without
considering any specific EV.
More specific research has been conducted in [4]. In this
paper it is stated that accumulator-supercapacitor connection
is effective for usage in hybrid electric vehicles. However the
drive in such vehicles differs from the one in full electric
vehicles. The study [5] shows that all advantages remain for
electric vehicle as well, but as an electro-mechanic energy
converter DC motor was chosen, that nowadays is rarely
used, which is shown in [1].
The study [6] exhibits the research of the efficiency of
EV drive with independent power supply on the example of a
tram that has its own differences to other electric vehicles
such as electric cars. Moreover, in this study all the attention
was turned to power supply, electric motor being omitted
from studying.
Taking this under consideration it can be concluded that
the research of the increasing the efficiency of electric
vehicle drives with supercapacitors in power supply with
connection to the model of real EV and considering power
supply as well as electric motor is the actual task that is
studied and exhibited in this paper.
 IV. MEANS OF REASERCH
In order to conduct the research the following parameters
of the elements of EV were chosen:
 EV: electric scooter, type Genata Gtle 250; maximum
speed – 55 km/h, maximum travel distance – 80 km at
a speed of 30 km/h, weight – 45 kg, maximum load –
150 kg;
 Electric motor: two induction motors with the squirrel
cage rotor M2AA 080 C2, with a rated power of
1.1 kW, a power voltage of 230/400 V, a frequency of
rotation of 2870 rpm, with performance efficiency of
80.6 % each;
V. RESULTS OF RESEARCH
During the work on the urban driving cycle the drive
operates on a repeated-short-term mode, which leads to
peaks of high power consumption and moments of energy
recuperating due to often accelerations and decelerations of
the IM. The dependence of the consumed power of the drive
without supercapacitors on the time working on such load is
represented on “Fig. 2”. During the peaks of power
consumption the big losses proportional to current rms occur
in the power supply. Connecting supercapacitors with lesser
resistance in-parallel to the accumulator battery will result in
reducing the heat losses and thus the overall power
consumption by the EV.

 a battery of lithium-ion accumulators Honcell A. Dependence of Efficiency on Capacitance

HCP603650NZC: rated voltage – 370 V, capacity –
1.25 A·h, internal resistance 13 Ohms, weight –
2.1 kg;
 a battery of supercapacitors Nesscap ESHSR-
0100C0-002R7, composed of 136-consistently
connected elements whose capacity varies within 25–
200 F per one element.
The research was carried out on a simulated model of the
EV drive with the mentioned above parameters with the help
of Matlab/Simulink software.
To create the conditions close to real life scooter
operation modes the UN/ECE Elementary Urban Cycle was
chosen for simulating the load of the EV drive, as shown on
the “Fig. 1”.
In order to achieve the most efficient result it is important
to get the right value of supercapacitor capacitance for the
specific EV drive. If the capacitance is too low, the
supercapacitor battery will be discharged to low voltages
during the peak power consumption (vehicle acceleration),
which will cause the further recharging of supercapacitor
during the vehicle movement, thus increasing the load on the
accumulator and therefore heat losses and power
consumption as well. On the other hand, choosing the
capacitance too big means the increasing of the EV’s weight
and therefore the power consumption as well due to the
bigger friction resistance.
The research of the EV drive efficiency has been
conducted varying supercapacitor battery capacitance (and
with it resistance and weight as well). The results of the
research are shown on the “Table I” and “Fig. 4”.

TABLE I. THE EV DRIVE EFFICIENCY DEPENDING ON

SUPERCAPACITOR CAPACITANCE
Single cell Energy consumed
Efficiency
capacitance, F during the cycle, J
0 0.4004 75 638

50 0.4167 73 223

75 0.4203 72 906

100 0.4224 72 695

Fig. 1. The UN/ECE Elementary Urban Cycle.
125 0.4231 72 888

150 0.4237 73 009

200 0.4237 73 473

Fig. 2. The consumed power of EV drive without supercapacitors working on the Urban Driving Cycle.
 The efficiency of the drive, as can be seen from the table,
is constantly increasing with the increasing of capacitance,
but that is a misleading result. Taking a battery with higher
capacitance will result in increasing of weight of the EV, and
thus the “useful” load in calculating the efficiency will be
higher in spite of the fact that this load is not really useful for
the driver. That is why the consumed energy during the cycle
is more representative parameter.
The study has shown that the rational value of
capacitance that provides the least possible energy
consumption exists. For the specific EV under consideration
that value is 100 F per cell or 0.735 F for the battery. Using
that specific supercapacitor battery the overall energy
consumption can be decreased by 3.9 %.
B. Increasing the Efficiency with Pause Recharging
The implementation of supercapacitor itself leads to the
increasing of EV drive efficiency, but it can be increased
even more. Using supercapacitors provides additional
problem: due to their high capacitance the battery might not
be fully recharged during the movement pause before the
next acceleration as can be seen on the “Fig. 3 (a)”. Thus the
next period of acceleration will start with the decreased
voltage of supercapacitor, which means the less energy will
be provided by the supercapacitors and more by the
accumulators that have higher resistance. This will lead to
increasing of heat losses as well as overall energy
consumption. To solve this problem authors propose using
the special pause-recharging system (PRS) that will increase
the recharging current of supercapacitors making them fully
recharged before the following acceleration, as shown on the
“Fig. 3 (b)”. It is worth noticing that for the best results the
recharging current has to be carefully calculated: if it is too
small the supercapacitor would not be recharged in time; if it
is too big – high currents lead to high heat losses.
The research has shown the implementation of the pause-
recharging system indeed leads to the decreasing of the
energy consumption, as shown on the “Table II” and
“Fig. 4”. The connection the supercapacitors to the power
supply with implementation of PRS can decrease overall
energy consumption by 4.0 %. The economy of additional
0.11 % of energy might seem small, however it can be
achieved without any significant investments: the pause-
recharging system does not require additional components
installed to the power supply, it only needs an energy
distribution program for accumulator-supercapacitor parallel
connection.

(a)

(b)

Fig. 3. The time dependance of supercapacitor battery voltage with the usage of a single-cell capacitance of 100 F: (a) – without a pause-recharging system;
(b) – with a pause recharging system.
 TABLE II. THE EV DRIVE ENERGY CONSUMPTION WITH AND
WITHOUT PAUSE-RECHARGING SYSTEM

Energy Economy,
Energy Consumption, J
Single cell %
capacitance, F Without Without With
With PRS
PRS PRS PRS
0 75 638 - - -

50 73 223 73 239 3.19 3.17

75 72 906 72 858 3.61 3.68

100 72 695 72 610 3.89 4.00

Fig. 5. The dependence of consumed energy economy by connecting the
125 72 888 72 779 3.64 3.78 supercapacitors with and without implementation of the PRS.

150 73 009 72 902 3.48 3.72

200 73 473 73 432 2.86 2.92

Fig. 4. The dependence of consumed by the EV drive energy for one
Urban Driveng Cylce on the supercapacitor capacitance with and without
implementation of the PRS.
VI. CONCLUSION
1. The connection of supercapacitors in-parallel to the
accumulator battery can decrease the power consumption of
the EV drive. The efficiency increase depends on the value
of capacitance with the existence of rational value providing
the least energy consumption. For the studied EV drive it is
possible to reduce the energy consumption by 3.9 % that
way.
2. The energy consumption can be reduced even further
by implementation of the special pause-recharging system
(PRS) for the power supply that allows supercapacitors to be
fully recharged during the moments of pause before the nest
acceleration. For the studied EV drive such system provides
overall reducing of energy consumption by 4.0 %.
3. The energy economy can be even greater while using
the low-voltage power supply. For the studied EV drive the
energy economy can be obtained at values of 5.09 % without
PRS and 5.23 % with PRS.

C. Increasing the Efficiency of the Drive with Low-Voltage REFERENCES

Power Supply
The exhibited above research was conducted with the
voltage of 370 V on the power supply. That is necessary
voltage for operating the IM. However, due to the fact that
such batteries require a lot of space to create connection in-
series, usually low-voltage power supply are applied with
further voltage increasing through a DC-DC converter. The
usage of a DC-DC converter decrease the efficiency of the
drive since it provides additional heat losses, however often
it is necessary due to space requirements. So the same
research as before was provided to the EV drive with low-
voltage power-supply (26 V) as well. The results, shown on
the “Fig. 5” have proven the tendency: the rational
capacitance of supercapacitor that provides least energy
consumption exists; implementation of the PRS can decrease
the energy consumption even further.
The research has shown that for low-voltage power
supply even more energy economy can be obtained: 5.09 %
without PRS and 5.23 % with PRS. The higher energy
economy can be explained by the possibility of using lower
amount of higher capacitance supercapacitors, which
increased the efficiency of supercapacitor battery itself.
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