Investigating the effects of power split PHEV transmission gear ratio to operation cost

Fuel economic has been one of the dominant issues in automotive industry. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have the potential to reduce the fuel consumption and improve vehicular emissions. In this paper, two rule-based control strategies based on the all electric range focused operation and blended operation are applied for the first time to discuss the effects of the power split PHEV planetary gear ratios to the operation costs. Since there are many PHEV operation modes, modeling the power split device (PSD) configuration is complex and designing the ideal PSD planetary gear ratio is quite challenging. The study provides the direction of the determination of PSD planetary gear ratio. The simulation model is developed by using MATLAB. The dynamic PSD and powertrain models of PHEV are used in the simulation. The simulation results of this study demonstrate that the PSD planetary gear ratio can be determined ideally to minimize the vehicle running cost, and to maintain the vehicle performance.