Empiric weight model for the early phase of vehicle architecture design

Vehicle weight is one of the most important input parameters for Vehicle Architecture Design (VAD). Paradoxically, even though the VAD requires weight as an input, weight is also the result of the architecture definition thus leading to iterations within the weight spiral. To reduce the number of iterations, it is important to estimate the initial weight as precisely as possible. In practice, the estimation is mainly based on predecessor vehicles. This limits the applicability and accuracy of the approach and indicates the need for additional weight models. In this paper, we present a weight model adapted to the early stage of VAD. Besides applicability in this phase, we take into account combustion, hybrid and electric drivetrains. The model shows high accuracy within our evaluation. The accuracy of the results is not even inferior in comparison to a more detailed weight model that is not applicable at this early stage.