Science from Terra: Hybrid electric vehicles and their challenges: A review

Plug-in hybrid electric car near AFS Trinity Engineering Center in Livermore, CA. (c)
AFS Trinity Power Corporation

The last issue of the prestigious journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews present a review article about the state of the art of the technology behind of hybrid electric vehicles. The authors are M.A. Hannan, F.A. Azidin and A. Mohamed from the University Kebangsaan Malaysia. The abstract follows.

There are numbers of alternative energy resources being studied for hybrid vehicles as preparation to replace the exhausted supply of petroleum worldwide. The use of fossil fuel in the vehicles is a rising concern due to its harmful environmental effects. Among other sources battery, fuel cell (FC), super capacitors (SC) and photovoltaic cell i.e. solar are studied for vehicle application. Combinations of these sources of renewable energies can be applied for hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) for next generation of transportation. Various aspects and techniques of HEV from energy management system (EMS), power conditioning and propulsion system are explored in this paper. Other related fields of HEV such as DC machine and vehicle system are also included. Various type models and algorithms derived from simulation and experiment are explained in details. The performances of the various combination of HEV system are summarized in the table along with relevant references. This paper provides comprehensive survey of hybrid electric vehicle on their source combination, models, energy management system (EMS) etc. developed by various researchers. From the rigorous review, it is observed that the existing technologies more or less can capable to perform HEV well; however, the reliability and the intelligent systems are still not up to the mark. Accordingly, this review have been lighted many factors, challenges and problems sustainable next generation hybrid vehicle.