While there is a continued push toward mass adoption of electric vehicles
globally, internal combustion engines seem posed to continue to play a key role
in the mobility industry even as electrified powertrains continue to increase in
market share. For internal combustion engines to continue to propel people and
goods, engine technologies need to continuously improve in both efficiency and
emissions. This paper will explore six technologies to increase the efficiency
and reduce the emissions output of an engine in a plug-in hybrid-electric
vehicle (PHEV). The technologies employed on this prototype vehicle include
deceleration fuel cutoff, start–stop, increasing the mean engine operating
temperature, preheating the engine oil, implementing an electrically heated
catalyst, and air–fuel ratio control. Each of these technologies have been well
studied and have demonstrated robustness through decades of deployments on road.
However, pairing these technologies with a PHEV architecture will enable the
benefits of these technologies to be fully exploited. It will be demonstrated
that the combined application of these six technologies increased the
experimental vehicles miles per gallon gasoline equivalent by 22% and reduced
greenhouse gas emissions by 32% over a real-world driving emissions baseline.
This paper will explore the background and anticipated impacts that these
technologies should have, as well as demonstrate their implementation on the
experimental vehicle. Emphasis will be placed on the way each of these
technologies were tested and the environment that they were tested in. The
testing environments include an engine dynamometer, a chassis dynamometer, and
real-world driving emission tests. In all these settings, the efficiency and
emissions were measured. The final test involves a real-world driving emissions
test. The vehicle in question is an experimental PHEV developed by students at
The Ohio State University. Results and conclusions are drawn from the data
collected for how each of these technologies impacted engine operation in the
PHEV.