The proton-exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has the advantage of high energy conversion efficiency, environmental friendliness, and zero carbon emissions. Therefore, as an attractive alternative energy, it is widely used in vehicles. Due to its high nonlinearity, strong time variation, and complex failure mechanisms, it is extremely difficult to predict PEMFC life in electric vehicles. The uncertainty of life predictions for the PEMFC limits its wide application. Since it is particularly important to accurately carry out PEMFC life predictions, significant research efforts are directed toward tackling this issue by adopting effective methods. In this paper, a number of PEMFC life prediction methods for electric vehicles are reviewed and summarized. The goal of this review is to render feasible and potential solutions for dealing with PEMFC life issues considering dynamic vehicle conditions. Based on this review, the reader can also easily understand the research status of PEMFC life prediction methods and this review lays a theoretical foundation for future research.

Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) are vulnerable to oxygen starvation when working under variable load. To address these issues, a cascade control strategy of sliding mode control (SMC) and Proportion Integration Differentiation (PID) control is proposed in this study. The goal of the control strategy is to enhance the PEMFC’s net power by adjusting the oxygen excess ratio (OER) to the reference value in the occurrence of a load change. In order to estimate the cathode pressure and reconstruct the OER, an expansion state observer (ESO) is developed. The study found that there is a maximum error of about 2200Pa between the estimated cathode pressure and the actual pressure. Then the tracking of the actual OER to the reference OER is realized by the SMC and PID cascade control. The simulation study, which compared the control performance of several methods—including PID controller, adaptive fuzzy PID controller and the proposed controller, i.e., the SMC and PID cascade controller—was carried out under various load-changing scenarios. The outcomes demonstrate that the proposed SMC and PID cascade controller method really does have a faster response time. The overshoot is reduced by approximately 3.4% compared to PID control and by about 0.09% compared to fuzzy adaptive PID. SMC and PID cascade control reference OER performs more effectively in terms of tracking compared to PID control and adaptive fuzzy PID control.