Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Vol. 30, No. 2, May 2023, pp. 681~689 ISSN: 2502-4752, DOI: 10.11591/ijeecs.v30.i2.pp681-689  681 Journal homepage: http://ijeecs.iaescore.com Low-cost portable throttle curve manipulator for smooth initial movement of an electric vehicle Dimas Adiputra, Pangestu Widodo, Aldo Juan Widodo, Yosefan Alfeus Bayuaji, Nadia Dinda Pratama Putri Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Technology and Smart Industry, Telkom Institute of Technology Surabaya, Surabaya, Indonesia Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Jun 21, 2022 Revised Dec 30, 2022 Accepted Jan 2, 2023 This research aims to develop a low-cost portable throttle curve manipulator for a smooth initial movement of an electric vehicle. The hardware is mostly made up of an Arduino and a pulse width modulation (PWM)-to- direct current (DC) converter, which can be easily installed in electric vehicle. The manipulator produces a throttle output curve based on the current throttle input. The suitable throttle output curve is investigated in two stages. First, the four throttle curve types are compared based on motor vibration change and total energy usage during initial movement. They are none, linear, exponential, and polynomial curve types with a delay of 1 s. Then, in the second stage, the delay is varied from 0.5 to 2.5 s. The result shows that the linear throttle curve output with a delay of 1 s produces is appropriate to refine the initial movement of an electric vehicle compared to the polynomial and exponential curve types. The brushless DC electric (BLDC) motor vibration change decreases from 148.75 Hz to 107.45 Hz and total energy usage decreases from 90.64 joules to 87.23 joules. Therefore, the research concludes that the low-cost portable throttle curve manipulator can be developed using a linear throttle output curve with a delay of 1 s. Keywords: BLDC motor Electric vehicle Initial movement Throttle curve Total energy usage Vibration change This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Dimas Adiputra Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Technology and Smart Industry Telkom Institute of Technology Surabaya East Java, Surabaya, Indonesia Email: adimas@ittelkom-sby.ac.id 1. INTRODUCTION In recent years, there has been a significant increase in public interest in electric vehicles (EV), particularly for smart city development [1], such as cars [2], motorcycles [3], trains [4], and aircraft [5], because they can be the solution to rapid climate change, which is a major concern for people all over the world [6]- [8]. The change in the direction of vehicle development from combustion engines to electric is caused by the advantage of electric vehicles that they have no tailpipe emissions. An electric vehicle is also more energy efficient compared to a combustion engine vehicle. On the other hand, electric vehicles also have the inherent problem of relatively slow charging of the battery compared to the instant refilling process of gasoline in combustion engine vehicles. A hybrid vehicle aims to overcome this problem by using both a combustion engine and an electric engine in the same vehicle. This phenomenon also triggers the rapid development of components related to EVs, such as batteries, motors, controllers, and converters [9]. The battery acts as the power source. There are several types of batteries, but lithium-ion is the most commonly used because of its high current and power capability. A motor converts electrical energy to kinetic energy in the form of vehicle movement and sometimes be used as a