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Automotive manufacturers continue to move further toward powertrain electrification. There are already many hybrid electric vehicles on the market that are based on a variety of system architectures. Ford Motor Company has investigated a new Dual Drive configuration that promises to overcome some of the attribute deficiencies associated with current architectures. The primary objective of this development project was to demonstrate the fuel economy potential of this system in a vehicle. To accomplish this objective, the team used an internally developed, formal Controls Development Process (CDP) for the control system design and validation. This paper describes the development of the vehicle control system in the context of this process.

Environmental concerns have prompted increasingly stringent government legislation regulating automotive fuel economy and emissions. Recent rules not only mandate lower total emissions, but also require on-board diagnostics which monitor the vehicle exhaust systems. In order to satisfy these requirements, new and improved exhaust gas sensors are continually being developed to serve as part of the engine feedback control and emissions monitoring systems. Before we can properly design these new sensors, we must attempt to better understand the harsh environment in which they will operate. In this paper, we examine the high frequency nature of pressure fluctuations found in the exhaust system for both steady state and transient engine operating conditions. We also investigate temperature fluctuations, but restrict these measurements to the sampling environment found in the packaging of a Ford Si-based microcalorimeter.