Energy based method to analyse fuel saving potential of hybrid vehicles for different driving cycles

Fuel saving potential of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) depends mainly on driving cycle and on sizing of powertrain components. Since a complete driving cycle, representing the whole life usage of a vehicle, is very long it is time consuming to predict the fuel saving potential, especially if many different types of HEVs should be analyzed. This paper presents an energy based method to quickly screen different types of HEVs for many and long driving cycles, in order to find interesting candidates for deeper and more accurate analysis. The technique used also allows to derive the fuel consumption analytically, and thus it is a very effective tool to explain the main fuel savings mechanisms of different types of HEVs and how they are influenced by the driving cycle. Some of the simplifications will lead to errors, but since the sign of the main errors are known it is still easy to draw several clear conclusions using the method.