Research on PHEV comprehensive fuel consumption based on fuel-electricity conversion

China Automotive Technology and Research Center Co., Ltd., Tianjin 300300, China

^* Corresponding author: zhangluowei@catarc.ac.cn

Abstract

In order to show the fuel-saving effect of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) [1]more intuitively, three conversion methods of fuel and electricity were introduced considering different aspects, namely conversion method of simple calorific value, comprehensive calorific value and carbon dioxide emission. Firstly, the energy consumption of two mainstream PHEVs according to the current domestic (China) energy consumption test regulation were tested [2], then the tested values were converted by the three conversion methods to get the equivalent fuel consumption. What’s more, by the introduction of pure electricity Utilization Factor (UF) [3], the fuel consumption of PHEV at two stages (pure electric driving and pure fuel driving) were weighted to obtain the comprehensive fuel consumption. The effects of different conversion methods on fuel consumption were analyzed, and the results were compared horizontally with that of traditional fuel vehicles. The result shows that the comprehensive fuel consumption of PHEV converted by the method of carbon dioxide emission is the highest. Secondly, from the perspective of comprehensive calorific value, PHEV has obvious fuel-saving effect and a better development prospect comparing with traditional fuel vehicle. Last but not the least, PHEV has a significant fuel-saving advantage over traditional fuel vehicle in areas where the proportion of thermal power generation is relatively low, and with the continuous decrease of the overall proportion of thermal power generation, the fuel-saving effect of PHEV will become more and more obvious.