The Technological Constraints of Mass, Volume, Dynamic Power Range and Energy Capacity on the Viability of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles

For electric or hybrid automobile power plants to gain wide acceptance, they must have adequate performance characteristics. High powered gasoline engines are cheap, compact and reliable. Although they produce pollutants and are fundamentally mis-matched to the automobile's torque-speed characteristics for minimum fuel consumption, they are, nevertheless, formidable competitors to electric propulsion systems.

In urban traffic, almost 65% of a vehicle's propulsion energy is available for regeneration. An electric vehicle's battery is capable of reclaiming a significant portion of this energy if novel concepts, including optimum impedance matching of components are utilised. However, without power supplementation from a gasoline engine, it cannot produce the required performance. Therefore, until batteries with enhanced characteristics are readily available, hybrid power plants offer the only liquid fuel efficient alternative to ICEs.

This paper illustrates the application of techniques to enchance the viability of hybrid and electric vehicles.