There’s a lot of talk about electric vehicles (EVs). And within those discussions are some key topics. Range. Cost. Battery life. One thing that influences all of these is the vehicle’s Battery Management System (BMS). And because of its critical importance to EVs, testing the BMS needs to be comprehensive.

Using a real battery for testing may seem like a good idea, but there are several considerations that suggest otherwise:

• Cost: a real battery is expensive
• Safety: a real battery cannot be easily used to test under extreme conditions and could be permanently damaged by testing
• Availability: a real battery may still be in development and not available for BMS testing
• Adaptability: a real battery cannot be easily converted into another battery type (ex. nickel metal hybrid to lithium-ion)

A virtual battery

To get around using a real battery, ETAS offers BMS-LABCAR. BMS-LABCAR is a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) solution which mimics signal-level behavior of individual battery cells and battery packs across a variety of challenging conditions. You can think of BMS-LABCAR as a Virtual Battery for the testing of Battery Management Systems. And because it’s part of our family of HiL LABCAR test systems, it’s fully scalable from desk-sized to full-size racks and allows for single ECU to full-vehicle network configurations. It’s also safety-qualified through intensive EMC (IEC61326-1) and safety (IEC61010-1) testing.

BMS-LABCAR consists of three components: the LABCAR HiL System, LABCAR-MODEL-BAT -the battery plant model-, and the Battery Cell Simulator hardware.

Learn more about BMS-LABCAR by visiting the ETAS virtual booth at the upcoming Battery Show & EV Tech Digital Days (November 10 – 12, 2020) or contact us.

Solutions for validation and calibration

And testing battery management systems isn’t all we do for H(EV). With over 25 years of experience in measurement and calibration of traditional powertrain systems, you can trust us to also provide quality and valuable solutions for the challenges in EV propulsion system and component development. For more information, read our blog post: Future-proof solutions for (H)EV propulsion system and component development.