Software solution alleviates range anxiety

The new technique requires drivers to plug in their destination and automatically pulls in data on a host of variables to predict energy use for the vehicle.

‘Electric cars already have range-estimation software, but we believe our approach is more accurate,’ said Dr Habiballah Rahimi-Eichi, a postdoctoral researcher at NC State and lead author of a paper on the work.

‘Existing technologies estimate remaining range based on average energy consumption of the past 5 miles, 15 miles, et cetera,’ Rahimi-Eichi said in a statement. ‘By plugging in the destination, our software looks at traffic data, whether you’ll be on the highway or in the city, weather, road grade, and other variables. This predictive, big-data approach is a significant step forward, reducing the range estimation error to a couple of miles. In some case studies, we were able to get 95 per cent range estimation accuracy.’

The software is said to take all of the data related to the route between starting point and destination and uses big data techniques to determine which pieces of information are important and extract key features that can be plugged into an algorithm to estimate how far the vehicle can go before recharging.