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The United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Center for Advanced Technology (NCAT), located at its National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been a global leader in development and demonstration of low-greenhouse gas emitting, highly fuel efficient series hydraulic hybrid drivetrain technologies. Advances in these exciting new technologies have stimulated industry to begin manufacturing hydraulic hybrids for both commercial truck and non-road equipment markets. Development activities are continuing for other markets, including light-duty vehicles. Given the commercial emergence of these low-greenhouse gas emitting series hydraulic hybrids, EPA has passed the leadership for further development to industry.

The Advanced Light-Duty Powertrain and Hybrid Analysis tool (ALPHA) was created by EPA to evaluate the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions of Light-Duty (LD) vehicles. ALPHA is a physics-based, forward-looking, full vehicle computer simulator capable of analyzing various vehicle types combined with different powertrain technologies. The ALPHA desktop application was developed using MATLAB/Simulink. The ALPHA tool was used to evaluate technology effectiveness and off-cycle technologies such as air-conditioning, electrical load reduction technology and road load reduction technologies of conventional, non-hybrid vehicles for the Midterm Evaluation of the 2017-2025 LD GHG rule by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Transportation and Air Quality (OTAQ).