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In recent years the fuel efficiency of modern hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) powertrains has progressed to a point where low voltage auxiliary electrical system loads have a pronounced impact on fuel economy (FE). While improving the energy consumption of an individual component may result in minor improvements, the collective optimization of such loads across a complete vehicle system can result in meaningful FE gains. Traditional methods using chassis dynamometer testing alone to quantify the impact of a specific auxiliary load can lead to issues where signal state changes are too small for accurate detection. This presents difficulties in accurately predicting the influence of such loads on FE of next-generation electrified vehicles under development. This paper describes a newly developed method where dynamometer test results are combined with computer simulation analyses to create a practical technique for assessing the impact of small changes in auxiliary load energy consumption.

The HyTrans project is a collaborative development of a micro hybrid demonstrator vehicle based on an urban delivery van. The project partners consist of Ricardo, Ford, Gates and Valeo and the project is co-funded by the UK Energy Savings Trust under the New Vehicle Technology Fund. A concept study analysis has been performed for an urban delivery van in order to identify the impact of different cost efficient belt driven micro hybrid concepts on fuel consumption performance over representative real world delivery driving conditions.