Could the era of the electric car finally be upon us? The answer is yes, but there is still a long way to go. A major concern for consumers of electric vehicles has been that the range of these vehicles has shown to be extremely variable with ambient temperature, [1,2] The ability to understand the effects that potential factors will have to the range of any EV is critical to creating a better design and thus improving the product for customers, ultimately driving increasing adoption. Forthis reason, the earlier an engineer is able to quantify how different factors will affect the EV, the better, and one of the most efficient ways to do this is through computer simulation.

The purpose of this study was to quantify the ability to capture at least some of these effects using a co-simulation approach to represent different segments of the vehicle. The results were then compared against published empirical data collected by Charged[3] magazine to determine how well the approach fits real world test results. The co-simulation was done using three different software packages to model different parts of the vehicle.