Conceptual design upgrade on hybrid powertrains resulting from electric improvements

Hybrid vehicles have experienced a great boom in recent years thanks to the increasing spread of ‘parallel’ architectures, often realized by a planetary gear train (hybrid Synergy Drive). At the same time, an enhancement of electrical and electronic components has been experienced; these improvements especially concern reliability and efficiency. Particularly, the possibility of using supercapacitors with increasing storage performances makes possible to manage higher power flows together with a superior efficiency. These innovations may challenge the architecture used nowadays on medium size cars. The hybrid series architecture, which allows the optimal management of the combustion engine, has been disadvantaged until now by the electric powertrain efficiency. In the current scenario, this architecture could benefit from the above-mentioned technology, becoming a competitive alternative to the actual powertrain configurations. The aim of this article is the efficiency analysis, in order to evaluate the operational energy efficiency achievable thanks to this configuration. This analysis will be carried out considering all the possible working conditions of the different powertrains.