Integrated Management of a battery discharge for electric racing Motorcycles: A Case Study of Ducati's V21L in the MotoE Championship

In the new era of the carbon-neutral automotive industry, one of the many solutions is the electric mobility: Ducati Motor Holding S.p.A is aiming also in this direction with its E-Mobility Department whose first product is the V21L that brought a technological step forward in the MotoE championship. But besides the technological side, also the logistic point of view is important since shipping Electric Vehicles (EVs) across the world is critical due to the always energized battery pack. Usually, there is no need to discharge any EV to be shipped afterward but in the racing environment is not like this: having a spare motorbike ready to race is a common practice and once the day is over the motorbike must be ready to reach its new destination. The solution is to safely discharge the battery pack through its charging connector and an external electronic load controlled via CANbus. This thesis will resemble the work that has been done in the Vehicle Control Unit (VCU) to manage the whole operation connecting the battery pack, the electronic load, and the other devices with also the fault management of this new element. The chapters will follow the project phases that have been carried out: a general overview of the vehicle and the electronic load also with the flux diagram of the discharge operation, the development of the Simulink code and its Software-in-the-Loop (SIL) test phase using a self-developed environment with CANoe. After this, the final code was also tested first in a HIL environment, then on the real hardware confirming the good behaviour of the project.