Simulation of the Fuel Consumption Reduction Potential of a Mild Hybrid System Applied to a Popular Flexible Fuel Vehicle

Fuel consumption and CO₂ emission are important drivers of automotive industry product evolution. In Europe, the manufactures have the compromise to reduce their fleet consumption steadily and, in Brazil, a still voluntary but growing labeling program makes the vehicular energetic efficiency one of the main concerns during the concept phase. Different from the full hybrid technology, where the car can be driven purely by the electric motor, the mild hybrid has been mentioned in literature as cost-effective route to reduce CO₂ emissions through the combination of a highly responsive low power electric motor, which acts supporting the internal combustion engine in special driving situations, with energy recovery and storage system composed of advanced batteries. Therefore the mild hybrid system can be understood as one type of downsizing strategy. In Brazil the tax reduction policy for 1.0 vehicle makes this strategy attractive to improve vehicular performance and reduce fuel consumption. The objective of this work was therefore the evaluation via simulation software of the potential of this technology applied on a typical popular vehicle in terms of performance and fuel consumption and CO₂ emission reduction.