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In the global quest for preventing fossil fuel depletion and reducing air pollution, hybridization plays a fundamental role to achieve cleaner and more fuel-efficient automotive propulsion systems. While hybrid powertrains offer many opportunities, they also present new developmental challenges. Due to the many variants and possible architectures, development issues, such as the definition of powertrain concepts and the optimization of operating strategies, are becoming more and more important. The paper presents model-based fuel economy analyses of different hybrid vehicle configurations, depending on the position of the electric motor generator (EMG). The analyses are intended to support the design of powertrain architecture and the components sizing, depending on the driving scenario, with the aim of reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.

In the last years the automotive industry has been involved in the development and implementation of CO2 reducing concepts such as the engines downsizing, stop/start systems as well as more costly full hybrid solutions and, more recently, waste heat recovery technologies. These latter include ThermoElectric Generator (TEG), Rankine cycle and Electric Turbo Compound (ETC) that have been practically implemented on few heavy-duty application but have not been proved yet as effective and affordable solutions for the automotive industry. The paper deals with the analysis of opportunities and challenges of the Electric Turbo Compound for automotive light-duty engines. In the ETC concept the turbine-compressor shaft is connected to an electric machine, which can work either as generator or motor. In the former case the power can satisfy the vehicle electrical demand to drive the auxiliaries or stored in the batteries.