Reliability-Based Design Optimization (RBDO) for Electric Vehicle Market Systems

When designing a product, both engineering uncertainty and market heterogeneity should be considered to reduce the risk of failure in the market. Reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) approach allows decision makers to achieve target confidence in product performance under engineering uncertainty. Design for market systems (DMS) approach helps decision makers to find profit-maximized product design under market heterogeneity. This paper integrates RBDO and DMS approaches for an Electric vehicle (EV) design. Consumers’ preferences on warranted battery lifetime are heterogeneous while battery life itself is affected by various uncertainties such as battery characteristics and driving patterns. We optimized and compared four scenarios depending on whether engineering systems are deterministic or probabilistic, and whether a market is homogeneous or heterogeneous. The results provide some insight on how the optimal EV design should be altered depending on engineering uncertainty and market heterogeneity.