In this paper, the front- and rear-independent-drive electric vehicle (FRIDEV) is selected as the target vehicle for its good dynamic and economy performance. Based on the analysis of the cost, efficiency, and loss characteristics of different motors, the interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM) and induction motor (IM) are applied in the target powertrain system. Then, the proposed powertrain system is optimized based on the analysis of driving cycles. The optimal control strategy for the target powertrain system is developed, which consists of the driving mode switching algorithm and the driving torque distribution based on adaptive particle swarm optimization (APSO). Furthermore, in order to achieve the efficient autonomous driving of the target vehicle under the vehicle-following scenarios, a hierarchical control strategy is proposed with the combination of upper-level control of the speed planning strategy and the lower-level control of powertrain system control strategy. The upper-level control of speed planning strategy is designed, which can determine and track the target vehicle speed based on the information from vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. Finally, simulation analysis in MATLAB/Simulink and virtual driving experiments are conducted to verify the superiority of the proposed powertrain system and hierarchical control strategy.