An Overview of Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technology

Abstract

AbstractFossil-fuel-based transportation has raised several global concerns such as ever-increasing demand for petroleum oils, their high prices and exhaustible reserves, and the associated environmental (global warming, climate change) and health degradation. Hence, the world is facing challenges to find sustainable solutions to these major issues. Adaptation of efficient, and cleaner alternative transportation systems with low to zero carbon footprint has been emphasized among the different strategies. Hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) technology has exhibited promising solutions for ensuring improvements in fuel consumption and emission rates with a performance comparable to the conventional vehicles. The performance of an HEV largely depends on the powertrain type, components configuration and its architecture, and energy management strategy (EMS). This chapter presents an overview on essential components used in HEVs including the energy storage system (i.e. the battery, super-capacitor, and fuel cell), electric motors, and dc-dc/dc-ac converters and their size/ capacity optimization. Development of an efficient EMS to harvest the benefits of HEVs without compromising vehicle performance remains a major challenge. The state-of-the-art in EMSs for efficient HEVs is presented. Furthermore, factors/ issues affecting the performance of the EMS are discussed. It is quite crucial to apply a real time control strategy for an HEV capable of coordinating the on-board power sources ensuring enhanced fuel economy and reduced emissions. However, challenges exist in developing an efficient control strategy satisfying conflicting control constraints involving fuel consumption, emissions and drivability, without over-consuming battery power at the end of a given drive cycle. A section is devoted to explore emissions performance of HEVs under actual operating conditions and the emissions management of an HEV. Finally, key issues and challenges of HEV technology are identified and discussed.KeywordsHybrid electric vehicleBatterySuper capacitorsEnergy management systemControlsEmissions