Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 1305–1313

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Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

A comprehensive overview of hybrid electric vehicle: Powertrain configurations,

powertrain control techniques and electronic control units
Kamil Çağatay Bayindir, Mehmet Ali Gözüküçük, Ahmet Teke ⇑
Çukurova University, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Balcali, Saricam, Adana, Turkey

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The studies for hybrid electrical vehicle (HEV) have attracted considerable attention because of the neces-
Received 25 January 2010 sity of developing alternative methods to generate energy for vehicles due to limited fuel based energy,
Accepted 22 September 2010 global warming and exhaust emission limits in the last century. HEV incorporates internal composition
Available online 16 October 2010
engine, electric machines and power electronic equipments. In this study, overview of HEVs with a focus
on hybrid configurations, energy management strategies and electronic control units are presented.
Keywords: Advantages and disadvantages of each configuration are clearly emphasized. The existing powertrain
Hybrid electric vehicle (HEV)
control techniques for HEVs are classified and comprehensively described. Electronic control units used
Energy management
Electronic controller unit (ECU)
in HEV configuration are also elaborated. The latest trends and technological challenges in the near future
Powertrain configurations for HEVs are discussed.
Internal combustion engines Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Braking energy regeneration

1. Introduction like fuel cells. Nevertheless the power is transferred by electrically

Leading climate alarmists claim that global greenhouse gas
emissions need to decrease to 60% below the present levels by
2050 if humans are to avoid catastrophic climate change. But such
a drastic emissions reduction is at odds with the world’s energy
needs. Fossil fuels account for 85% of the world’s primary energy
for a very simple reason: they are the world’s least expensive
source of energy [1]. The production and consumption rates of
petroleum increase year by year as shown in Fig. 1 due to the much
lower cost of petroleum [2].
There is huge attention for low emission and independence to
the fossil fuel energy sources to decrease global warming on the
world. According to [3], 39.2% of total emissions in 2007 is raised
from transportation. Vehicle manufacturers and global laboratories
have started projects about electric vehicles to reduce carbon emis-
sion and the dependence to fossil fuel energy. Many projects about
electric vehicles are promising solutions for future. Many configu-
rations of electric vehicles are designed to attain these objectives.
Electric vehicles (EV) may include battery electric vehicles (BEV),
hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle
(FCEV). Electric vehicle is a multi disciplinary subject that covers
broad and complex aspects. The main idea of the electric vehicle
is to reduce the engine size and power for fuel consumption and
meet the necessary energy from the carbon-free energy sources
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 322 3386868; fax: +90 322 3386326.
E-mail addresses: cbayindir@cu.edu.tr (K. Çağatay Bayindir), aligozukucuk@
hotmail.com (M.A. Gözüküçük), ahmetteke@cu.edu.tr (A. Teke).
instead of mechanically from energy sources to the wheels to re-
duce the loss of energy. The major characteristics of these three
types’ vehicles are given in Table 1 [4]. It can be seen that the crit-
ical issue of BEV is the battery. Therefore, BEV is mainly suitable for
small electric vehicle for short range, low speed community trans-
portation, thus requires only smaller battery size. HEV can meet
consumers’ need and has added value but cost is the major issue.
FCEV has long term potential for future main stream vehicles;
however the technology is still in early development stage, its cost
and refueling system are the major concerns [4]. In addition to
these configurations, the plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and
hydrogen fuel cell plug-in hybrid vehicles (FCHEV) which are com-
binations of BEV, HEV and FCEV [5,6] are being studied by technol-
ogy developers.
There has been a few number of literature surveys on HEV topic.
Several review papers have focused on the general hybrid configu-
rations [4,7–12], power electronic components [6–8,13] and
energy management strategies [9,14–16] of HEV. But, there is a
lack of published papers which present a comprehensive overview
of HEV including hybrid powertrain configurations, power elec-
tronic components and energy management strategies. This study
fills this gap quite well by evaluating the practical vehicle applica-
tions and patents as well as published papers. Besides, this paper is
the first study which investigates the electronic control units in
HEV applications. The findings of this study contribute to literature
for a broader understanding of HEV.
The paper is therefore organized as follows. After this introduc-
tory section, general powertrain configurations of the HEV are

0196-8904/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2010.09.028
1306 K. Çağatay Bayindir et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 1305–1313

Fig. 1. World’s petroleum production and consumption.

Table 1
Major characteristics of BEV, HEV and FCEV [4].

Type’s of EVs Battery EVs Hybrid EVs Fuel cell EVs

Propulsion Electric motor drives Electric motor drives Electric motor drives
Internal combustion engine
Energy system Battery Battery Fuel cells
Ultracapacitor Ultracapacitor Need battery/ultracapacitor to enhance power density
for starting.
ICE generating unit
Integrated starter generator
Energy sources and Electric grid charging Gasoline stations Hydrogen
infrastructure facilities
Electric grid charging facilities (for plug-in Hydrogen production and transportation infrastructure
hybrid)
Characteristics Zero emission Very low emission Zero emission or ultra low emission
Independence on crude oils Long driving range High energy efficiency
High energy efficiency Higher fuel economy as compared with ICE Independence on crude oils
vehicles
High initial cost Dependence of crude oils Satisfied driving range
Commercially available Complex High cost
Relatively short range Commercially available Under development
Major issues Battery and battery Managing multiple energy sources Fuel cell cost
management
High performance Dependent on the driving cycle Hydrogen infrastructure
propulsion
Charging facilities Battery sizing and management Fueling system

described in Section 2. Energy management strategies of power-
train control in HEV and electronic control units are presented in
Section 3. Latest trends and developments in HEV technologies
are discussed in Section 4. Finally, the main points and significant
results of the paper are summarized in conclusions.
advanced energy storage devices and energy converters as com-
pared to the conventional internal combustion engine vehicles
(ICEVs) [17]. The powertrain configuration of HEV can be divided
into three types: Series, Parallel and combination HEV’s [10].

2.1. Series hybrid electric vehicles

2. HEV powertrain configurations
The main issue for HEV design is controlling the energy transfer
from sources to the loads with minimum loss of energy which de-
pends on the driving cycles. HEVs include more electrical apparatus
such as electric machines, power electronics, electronic continu-
ously variable transmissions, embedded powertrain controllers,
Series hybrid electric vehicles (SHEV) involve internal combus-
tion engine (ICE), generator, battery packs, rectifier, capacitors,
converters and electric motors as shown in Fig. 2 [18–25] do not
include supercapacitor (also known as ultracapacitor) packs unlike
[18]. SHEV has no mechanical connections between ICE and
wheels.
 K. Çağatay Bayindir et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 1305–1313 1307

BATTERY
PBATT
SR
SS
GENERATOR RECTIFIER CONVERTER
ST PDC PBUS
PMECH PCONV
ULTRACAPACITOR
FUEL PUC
ICE ELECTRIC MOTOR

PMECH

DRIVE TRAIN

Fig. 2. The power flow of SHEV powertrain.

ICE is turned off when the battery packs feed the system in the other vehicle configurations. It is applied to the commercial
urban driving. Significant amount of energy is supplied from the vehicles with the improvement of SHEV configurations. SHEV
regenerative braking and the down slope driving. Ultracapacitors applications include TEMSA – Avenue Hybrid bus, Mercedes –
are added to the system to extend the lifecycle and the efficiency Citaro bus and MAN-Lion’s City Hybrid bus. Benefits of the series
of the battery. ICE is turned on when the battery energy is low in hybrid configuration are summarized in Table 2 [26]. Series hybrid
the country driving. If the power demand of electric motor is the configuration is mostly used in heavy vehicles, military vehicles
less than output power of generator, the remaining power is used and buses [13].
to charge ultracapacitor banks and battery pack. If the power de-
mand of motor is higher than the output power of the generator, 2.2. Parallel hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV)
the required energy is supplied from ultracapacitor banks and bat-
tery pack. In PHEV, both the mechanical power output and the electrical
Therefore, engine operates at its maximum efficiency point so power output are connected in parallel to drive the transmission
the fuel efficiency improves and the carbon emission is less than as shown in Fig. 3. There are various control strategies used for par-
allel configuration. In the most common strategy, ICE is basically
always in on mode and operates at almost constant power output
Table 2
at maximum efficiency point.
Benefits of the series hybrid configuration [26]. If the power requested from transmission is higher than the
output power of ICE, the electric motor is turned on, ICE and elec-
Features Optimized efficient Fast ‘‘black box” service
power plant exchange possible
tric motor supply power to the transmission. If the power re-
Modular power plant Long operational life quested from transmission is less than the output power of the
possibilities ICE, the remaining power is used for charging the battery packs.
Optimized efficient Mature well proven In this configuration, regenerative braking power on a down slope
traction drive line technology
Engine down sizing Excellent transient
response
Table 3
Space packaging Zero emission operation
Benefits of the parallel hybrid configurations [26].
advantages possible
Disadvantages Larger traction drive Features Economic gain at high cost
system Retarder option but at complexity risk
Careful design algorithms Zero emission operation possible
a prerequisite Disadvantages Expensive system
Multiple energy Control complexity
conversions Careful design algorithms a prerequisite
Vehicles systems/ TEMSA Avenue Hybrid Tesla ultra light rail High voltages needed for efficiency
applications Complex space packaging
Orion VII Conventional light rail Hino HIMR
Wrightbus electrocity New Tesla buses Vehicles systems/applications Bus/heavy truck market

PBATT PCONV
BATTERY CONVERTER ELECTRIC MOTOR

PMECH
PMECH
TRANSMISSION DRIVE TRAIN

PMECH

FUEL
ICE

Fig. 3. The power flow of parallel HEV powertrain.

1308 K. Çağatay Bayindir et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 1305–1313

driving is used to charge the battery. Insight model introduced by
Honda is a specific implementation of parallel HEV (PHEV). Other
examples for PHEV applications are Ford Escape Hybrid SUV and
Lexus Hybrid SUV. Benefits of the parallel hybrid configuration
are given in Table 3 [26].
A general comparison of SHEV and PHEV is shown in Table 4,
[26].
2.3. Combination of parallel and series HEVs
Combination of parallel and series hybrid configurations into a
single package is quickly becoming the standard in passenger vehi-
cle hybridization [27]. As the name implies the combination hybrid
configuration is neither fully parallel nor series configuration. Fig. 4
shows the essential of the combination architecture.
The combination architecture has features of both series and
parallel hybrid configurations. Parallel and series HEVs are mostly
used in small automobiles, such as passenger cars [13]. They con-
jugate with power split devices (planetary gear set) allowing for
power path from ICE to wheels. A planetary gearbox connects
two electric machines and the ICE as shown in Fig. 5. Owing to
the connection of the sun gear and the planet gears, the speed of
the engine can simply be adjusted by varying the speed of the gen-
erator [28]. T1, T2, T3 are the torques, w1, w2, w3 are the rotational
speeds of the gear and R1, R2, R3 are the radii of the gear [29].
R1 R 
x3 ¼ x1 þ 2 x2
2R3 2R3
2R3 2R3
T3 ¼ T1 ¼ T2
R1 R2
’ control strategies are designed together [32]. The hardware config-
The planetary combination (PC) hybrid in Toyota Prius couples
an ICE, an alternator and a motor via a planetary gear set. The engine
is linked to the planet carrier; the alternator to the sun gear and the
output is the ring that transmits the torque to the differential. The
motor is also linked to the ring gear so that it is able to add torque
to the output shaft so to the differential. With this setup, there are
three degrees of freedom, with the alternator being used to control
the extra degree of freedom on the sun. Changes in the alternator
operation affect the engine operation yielding total control over
the engine at all driving conditions. Because the alternator controls
the torque on the engine, the engine can operate at the most effi-
cient point at each speed of operation. In addition to that, because
there is no gear changing involved with the PC hybrid, the engine
operation is less transient than the parallel configuration. It is not
as steady as the series though [30]. Features for combination of par-
allel and series HEVs are shown in Table 5.
3. Powertrain control techniques for HEV
The most important criteria in HEV design is to get most effec-
tive results with controlling conversion of energy on the power-
train. This overall effectiveness is usually checked against one of
the so-called standard drive cycles in the EU, USA or Japan to en-
able fair comparisons to be made. Therefore the controller design
is the key point of the design process. The aim of this section is
to review powertrain control strategies for HEVs and to discuss
their performances. The control strategies aim to satisfy a number
of goals for HEVs. There are four key goals [31]:
 Maximum fuel economy.
Minimum emissions.
ð1Þ
 Minimum system cost.
 Good driving performance.
ð2Þ
To achieve these goals, hardware configurations and powertrain
uration dictates to some extent what control strategies make
sense.
3.1. Energy management strategies for HEV

Table 4 The electric motors in HEV systems are powered by battery

A general comparison of SHEV and PHEV Powertrains. pack throughout electronic devices. The discharged battery is re-
Architecture System voltage Typical Electric Relative
charged by ICE or from regenerative braking. The electric drive
power fraction fuel mode is very limited according to battery power. If a more power-
requirement (%) economy ful battery is applied to the vehicle, it will increase electric drive
(kW) gain (%) range of the vehicle and it improves the fuel efficiency. However,
Parallel 14 V, 42 V, 3–40 5–20 5–40 the battery packs need to be recharged using an electric outlet
Configuration 144 V, 300 V since the regenerative braking and limited engine usage will not
Series 216 V, 274 V, >50 100 >75
be sufficient to fully recharge the larger battery packs. The opera-
Configuration 300 V, 350 V,
550 V, 900 V tion modes of the HEV fed from battery and ICE are described in
Fig. 6.

BATTERY
PBATT
SR
SS PCONV
GENERATOR RECTIFIER CONVERTER ELECTRIC MOTOR
ST PDC PBUS

PMECH PMECH

PMECH
TRANSMISSION TRANSMISSION

PMECH PMECH

ICE DRIVE TRAIN

FUEL

Fig. 4. The combination of parallel and series hybrid configurations.

 K. Çağatay Bayindir et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 1305–1313 1309

Fig. 5. View of planetary gear system.

conditioner, warning indicators and audio system. The operation

Table 5
The features for combination of parallel and series HEVs configurations [26].
Features Zero emission operation possible
Disadvantages Very expensive system
Control complexity
Careful design algorithms a prerequisite
Complex space packaging
Outdated by coupled hybrid topology
Vehicles systems/applications Fiat experimented
Nissan experimented
When the vehicle is started, ICE warms up [33]. If necessary,
the electrical motor works as a generator and it converts mechan-
ical energy to the electrical energy. The produced electrical en-
ergy is stored in the battery. The ICE supplies energy to the
powertrain and, if needed, to the battery when the vehicle is at
cruising speed. If the vehicle needs more power such as in ‘‘Pass-
ing Mode”, the ICE and battery supply energy to the powertrain.
Nonetheless, the regenerative braking converts otherwise wasted
energy from braking into electricity and stores it in the battery
when the vehicle is in ‘‘Braking Mode”. When the vehicle is in
neutral position, such as at a red light, the ICE and electric motor
shut off automatically, so that energy is not wasted in idling. The
battery continues to supply power auxiliary systems, such as air
modes of HEV are determined by energy management strategies
which are philosophy behind the power controller as shown in
Fig. 7.
Energy management control strategies can be divided into the
two main topics as shown in Fig. 8: Rule Based (RB) Control Strat-
egy and Optimization Based Control Strategy [35].
3.1.1. Rule Based Control Strategy
The main aspect involved in rule-based energy management ap-
proaches is their effectiveness in real time supervisory control of
power flow in a hybrid powertrain. The rules are designed based
on heuristics, intuition, human expertise and even mathematical
models and generally, without a priori knowledge of a predefined
driving cycle. These strategies can be classified into deterministic
and fuzzy rule based methods. The main idea of rule based strate-
gies is commonly based on the concept of load-leveling [35]. The
idea behind load-leveling an ‘‘IC-dominated hybrid” is to move
the actual ICE operating point as close as possible to some prede-
termined value for every instant in time during the vehicle opera-
tion. If the best efficiency is needed, the vehicle operation points
will be forced in the vicinity of the best point of efficiency at a par-
ticular engine speed. If the best fuel economy is needed, then vehi-
cle operation points will be forced in the vicinity of that point. The
resulting power difference will be used or contributed by the

STARTING CRUISING PASSING BRAKING STOPPED

BATTERY BATTERY BATTERY BATTERY BATTERY

ICE ELECTRIC ICE ELECTRIC ICE ELECTRIC ICE ELECTRIC ICE ELECTRIC
MOTOR MOTOR MOTOR MOTOR MOTOR

POWER POWER POWER POWER POWER

TRAIN TRAIN TRAIN TRAIN TRAIN

Fig. 6. The basic operation modes of hybrid electric vehicles.

1310 K. Çağatay Bayindir et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 1305–1313
Driver Power
Vehicle Speed Driver Command Command
Driver Command Interpreter
SOC
EM Speed
Fig. 7. Block diagram of HEV power controller [34].
CONTROL STRATEGIES
RULE BASED
FUZZY RULE BASED DETERMINISTIC R . B.
PREDICTIVE STATE MACHINE
ADAPTIVE MODIFIED P.F.
CONVENTIONAL POWER FOLLEWER
THERMOSTAT CONTROL
Fig. 8. Energy management control strategies for HEV.
electric machine (EM). Since the EM has a considerably smaller
power rating than the ICE and the degree of hybridization (DOH)
is on the ICE side, it can be reasonably assumed that the efficiencies
of the EM and the battery pack will have a smaller influence on the
overall efficiency [36].
3.1.1.1. Fuzzy rule based methods. Looking into a hybrid powertrain
as a multidomain, nonlinear and time varying plant, fuzzy logic
seems to be the most logical approach to the problem. In fact, in-
stead of using deterministic rules, the decision making property
of fuzzy logic can be adopted to realize a real time and suboptimal
power split. In other words, the fuzzy logic controller is an exten-
sion of the conventional rule based controller. The main advanta-
ges of fuzzy rule based methods are the following: (1)
robustness, since they are tolerant to imprecise measurements
and component variations and (2) adaptation, since the fuzzy rules
can be easily tuned, if necessary [35]. Fuzzy rule based methods are
composed of Conventional Fuzzy Strategy [37], Fuzzy Adaptive
Strategy [38] and Fuzzy Predictive Strategy [38].
3.1.1.2. Deterministic rule based methods. Heuristics based on anal-
ysis of power flow in a hybrid powertrain, efficiency/fuel or emis-
sion maps of an ICE and human experiences are utilized to design
deterministic rules, generally implemented via lookup tables, to
split requested power between power converters [35]. Determinis-
tic rule based methods consist of Thermostat (on/off) Strategy [39],
Power Follower (Baseline) Control Strategy [40], Modified Power
Follower (Base Line) Strategy [41] and State Machine Based Strat-
egy [42].
3.1.2. Optimization Based Control Strategy
These control strategies maximize the efficiency of the power-
train while minimizing the loss [43]. The optimal reference torques
for power converters and optimal gear ratios are calculated by
minimization of a cost function generally representing the fuel
consumption or emissions. If this optimization is performed over
a fixed driving cycle, a global optimum solution can be found. In
fact, the global optimal solution is noncasual in that it finds the
minimum fuel consumption using knowledge of future and past
ICE Power
Generator Power ICE and EM
Power
Controller EM Power
Scaling Factor
OPTIMIZATION BASED
GLOBAL OPTIMIZATION REAL TIME OPTIMIZATION
LINEAR PROGRAMMING EFC MINIMIZATION
DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING ROBUST CONTROL
STOCHASTIC D.P. MODEL PREDICTIVE
GAME THEORY DECOUPLING CONTROL
GENERIC ALGORITHM
CONTROL THEORY
power demands. Obviously, this approach cannot be used directly
for real time energy management; however, it might be a basis of
designing rules for online implementation or comparison for eval-
uating the quality of other control strategies [35].
3.1.2.1. Global optimization. A global optimization algorithm on the
powertrain flows has been developed on the basis of the Bellman
optimality principle and applied to fuel cell HEVs. The global opti-
mization aims at minimizing the cumulative energy loss through-
out the cycle [44]. There are several reported solutions to achieve
performance targets by optimization of a cost function represent-
ing efficiency and emissions over a drive cycle, yielding to global
optimal operating points [35]. Global optimization control strate-
gies can be divided into Linear Programming [45], Control Theory
Approach [46], Dynamic Programming [47], Stochastic DP [48],
Game Theory [49] and Genetic Algorithm [50].
3.1.2.2. Real time optimization. The global optimization techniques
are not directly application for real time development, considering
the fact that they are casual solutions. In order to develop a cost
function used in instantaneous optimization, in addition to a mea-
sure for fuel consumption, variations of the stored electrical energy
should also be taken into account to guarantee electrical self sus-
tainability [35]. Real time optimization control strategies can be di-
vided into Real Time Control Based on Equivalent Fuel
Consumption [51,52], Decoupling Control [53], Robust Control Ap-
proach [54] and Optimal Predictive Control [55].
3.2. Electronic controller units in HEVs
Electronic controller unit is the embedded system that manages
electrical systems or subsystems in a conventional vehicle such as
the energy conversion, the air conditioner, vehicle speed and the
warnings on the instrument panel. The electronic controller units
of the hybrid system can be classified as battery management unit
(BMU), ultracapacitor control unit (UCU), electronic vehicle control
unit (EVCU), engine control unit (ECU), electronic braking system
control unit (EBSCU) and drive system control unit (DSCU) as
shown in Fig. 9.
 K. Çağatay Bayindir et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 1305–1313 1311

HIGH VOLTAGE
DCAN
J1939 CAN
DSCU MECHANIC

UBUS

GENERATOR RECTIFIER DC/AC CONVERTER ELECTRIC MOTOR

ICE BRAKES

DC/DC CONVERTER DC/DC CONVERTER

EBSCU

BATTERY ULTRACAPACITOR

ECU BMU DSCU UCU

Accelerate Pedal
VCU
Brake Pedal
J1939 CAN
Dashboard
DCAN

Fig. 9. Electronic controller units in HEVs.

Battery management unit is an integral part of HEVs. It protects
the battery from damage, predicts battery life and maintains the
battery in an operational condition. BMU performs these tasks by
integrating one or more of the functions, such as protecting the
cell, controlling the charge, determining the SOC, the state of
health and the remaining useful life of the battery, cell balancing
as well as monitoring and storing historical data [56]. electronic
vehicle control units conventionally located in the vehicle cabin
are now more often being installed in the engine compartment
of the vehicle in order to reduce cost by shortening the harness
for exchanging signals with the unit and also to reduce the effect
of noise on other electric equipment [57]. In HEV, VCU performs
powertrain control by using energy management strategies
according to parameters received from accelerator pedal, BMU,
UCU and ECU.
Engine control unit is a system for controlling an internal com-
position (IC) engine with an electronic ECU, with at least one injec-
tor for injecting fuel into the combustion chambers of the IC
engine. An intelligent electronic module forms a single assembly
unit with the injector. The electronic module comprising an elec-
tronic memory unit for storing data, a computing unit, a sensing
unit for signal acquisition and an energy storage device for storing
electrical energy and powering the electronic module during oper-
ation of the IC engine. Control wires transmit an injection signal
from the electronic ECU to injector. The control wires are used both
for transmitting energy to the energy storage device and for two
way data exchange [58]. Electronic brake system for road vehicles
includes a decentrally formed electronic device and at least one
central module. The central module includes at least one micropro-
cessor with its individual intelligence. A module is coordinated in
each case to a respective wheel. The modules also include micro-
processors with an individual intelligence function [59]. Drive sys-
tem control unit is an electric motor system for reducing drive
wheel torque on a HEV includes an internal combustion engine,
an electric motor, a transmission and a controller. The internal
combustion engine is located in the HEV and generates an engine
torque. The electric motor is coupled to the internal combustion
engine and generates electric motor torque. Both the engine and
motor are coupled to the transmission that uses the combined
torque from both the engine and motor to generate drive wheel
torque on a drive wheel. The vehicle system controller is coupled
to the electric motor and senses any traction control events. When
a traction control event occurs the controller commands the
electric motor to reduce the drive wheel torque by reducing the
electric motor torque [60].
4. Latest trends and further developments in HEV
Recent advances in power electronics converter systems have
lead to develop different projects and ideas applied to the hybrid
electric vehicle for reducing carbon emission and fuel consump-
tion. For instance, Siemens developed bidirectional IGBT inverter
seven and eight phases. For another example, the integrated starter
generator (ISG) provides low cost, high efficiency and easy imple-
mentation. ISG can either be a belt driven alternator starter or a
crankshaft mounted starter, which can be connected with the
ICE, through a belt system or crankshaft [61].
ISG based electric subsystem contains mainly of a suitably sized
electric machine and a power electronic converter. Fig. 10 shows
the critical components of a typical ISG subsystem [62]. Usually,
the power electronic converter is comprised of a combination of
a traction inverter and a bidirectional DC/DC converter. Conse-
quently, the evolution steps of HEV technologies are shown in
Fig. 11.
ISG POWER SYSTEM
ELECTRIC MACHINE POWER ELECTRONIC
CONVERTER
DC/DC TRACTION
CONVERTER DC/AC INVERTER
Fig. 10. Typical ISG power system subcomponents.
1312 K. Çağatay Bayindir et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 1305–1313
LARGE IC ENGINE LARGE IC ENGINE
Small Generator Motor/Generator
12 V Battery Larger Battery
Fig. 11. The evolution steps of the HEV technologies.
On the other hand the new designs are developed on energy
sharing between supercapacitors and the lead acid batteries. A hy-
brid vehicle is a vehicle that combines, in addition to its main en-
ergy source (oil or gas), reversible energy storage devices like
flywheels, supercapacitors and batteries. These technologies that
associate supercapacitors and batteries are very promising in the
short and medium term because of the supercapacitors’ high
dynamics and the fact that their lifespan is about 10 years longer
than that of batteries. Supercapacitors have a power density that
is 10–100 times larger than that of batteries, but they have a den-
sity of energy that is smaller than that of batteries. Thus, superca-
pacitors follow the evolution of the future energy need for vehicles
and find their place in being a complement of or a replacement for
batteries [18]. New designs provide:
 Assisting the batteries during hard transient states.
 Increasing the batteries’ lifespan and decreasing their size.
 Offering performances independent of the battery state.
 Increasing the available power and, consequently, the hybrid
vehicle autonomy.
 Improving the energetic efficiency while regenerative braking is
employed.
In terms of capital costs, in 2010 FCEVs, BEVs and FCHEVs are all
far more costly than conventional ICE powertrains. However, by
2030 capital costs could drop significantly, with the FCHEV exhib-
iting the lowest capital costs, followed by the BEV and FCEV. In
terms of fuel costs, accurate prediction of future costs is not possi-
ble. The tank to wheel efficiency of each powertrain has a marked
effect on fuel costs per mile, electric vehicles achieving far higher
miles per GJ than either hydrogen or gasoline vehicles. In 2030,
BEVs and FCHEVs are relatively insensitive to fuel (electricity) cost
changes, whereas FCEVs and ICEs exhibit marked sensitivity to
hydrogen and gasoline costs respectively. This is partly due to
the differing powertrain efficiencies. IEA cost predictions are used
for the fuel cell and conventional powertrains in 2010 and 2030
[5,63] as summarized in Table 6.
Regarding total lifecycle costs over 100,000 mile, FCHEVs ap-
pear to be slightly cheaper than BEVs but exhibit a wider overall
Table 6
The capital cost of HEV equipments.
Total cost 2010 2030
ICE $2200 $2465
FCEV $47,400 $10,530
BEV $26,700 $7865
FCHEV $19,700 $5665
SMALL IC ENGINE NO ENGINE
Motor/Generator Large Battery
Larger Battery All Electric
sensitivity to combine (capital and running) costs. Both ICEs and
FCEVs have much greater lifecycle costs than FCHEVs and BEVs,
around 1.75 times higher.
5. Conclusions
The decreasing of fossil fuel energy sources and the increasing
of the carbon emission force the technology to the systems which
have renewable energy sources as a design philosophy. Among
several technologies, hybrid electric vehicles are a hot subject
today that has the advantages of lower fuel consumption, lower
operating costs, lower noise pollution, low emissions, smaller
engine size and long operating life. Hybrid electric vehicle studies
are expected to be more popular in future years with development
of battery technology, control techniques and government support
to the automobile owners and manufacturers.
This paper has presented an overview of HEV with a focus on
general hybrid configurations, energy management strategies and
electronic control units. The practical vehicle applications and pat-
ents are also exhibited to illustrate the current state of HEV tech-
nologies. Different strategies and future trends have been
critically discussed. The review of published articles, research pro-
jects and patents show that the engine size on the vehicle will get
smaller and/or disappear in the next future. HEV topologies can
also change in near future with the decrease in the cost price of
other renewable energy sources. Finally, the comprehensive over-
view of studies in the literature helps to document present trends
and explore future trends of HEV.
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