Assessment of Efficiency Improvement Techniques for Future Power Electronics Intensive Hybrid Electric Vehicle Drive Trains

It is obvious that the transportation sector consumes a large portion of the global oil and emits a vast amount of greenhouse gases (GHG). Furthermore, sets of serious issues, such as environmental pollution, global warming, and petroleum shortage have been brought to the attention of governments worldwide. For the latest two decades, with the intention of meeting the rigorous governmental environment regulations, researchers and vehicle manufactures have been seeking an alternative way to reduce GHG emission and developing a more efficient way to make use of the oil resources. Many studies indicate that electrifying the drive train is the trend of future vehicle development. But in short term, due to commercial conflicts and technical reasons, hybridizing is a popular vehicle alternative. In this paper, an overview of the history of efficiency improvement in terms of hybrid electrical vehicle (HEV) system configurations, battery technologies, power electronic converter topologies, and motor selection will be presented. In addition, the potentials of using HEV and electric vehicle (EV) technologies, to reduce GHG emissions and overall oil consumption, are discussed in detail. Finally, few realistic conflicts and commercialization issues for using the above mentioned efficiency improving techniques are also highlighted in this paper.