Using an electric differential (ED) in an electric vehicle
(EV) has many advantages. Flexibility and direct torque control
of the wheels during cornering and risky maneuvers are some of
these advantages. In spite of its reported advantages and
successes, the ED has several problems limits its applicability, for
example, an increment of control loops and an increase of
computational effort. In this paper, an ED for an EV with four
independent driven motors and two wheels steering ability is
proposed. The proposed ED is easy to implement and hasn’t the
problems of previous EDs. Improved Fictitious Master technique
is used to synchronization, and an adaptive desired wheel speed is
computed by using the Ackerman principle. The proposed ED is
simulated in MATLAB/Simulink software and the operation of
the system is evaluated under perturbed condition and curve and
straight path tracking. The simulation results indicate that the
proposed ED ensures both reliability and good path tracking.