Converters in Electric Vehicles: An Overview

Power electronic circuits, which consist of DC-DC converters, are essential components of contemporary electric vehicles. According to isolation schemes between the input and the output, DC-DC converters could be divided into two basic topologies: non-isolated converters and isolated converters. The isolated converter can provide isolation between its input and output and is widely used in situations where more than one output is needed. However, it has a larger size compared with the non-isolated one. And for vehicle applications, efficiency and size are the two most important aspects to be considered. Moreover, Isolated converters use a high-frequency transformer to isolate the input and the output side of the power conversion stage. Non-isolated converters are preferred due to lower losses, cost, size, and no core saturation-related problems. This paper briefly explains the recent developments and overall operation of Non isolated DC-DC converters used in electric vehicles