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India has gone through a lot of transformation over the last decade. Today it is the 6th largest and one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Rising income level, increased consumerism, rapid growth in urbanization and digitization have attributed to this change. Government focus on “Make in India” for promoting trade and investment in India have ensured that India emerge as one of the largest growing economies in the world. The automotive industry played a pivotal role in the manufacturing sector to boost economic activities in India. The passenger car market has increased 3 times over the last decade and it has led to increased mobility options for many people across India. However, this has put concerns on the country’s energy security and emission levels. According to IEA’s recent report on global CO2 emission, 32.31 Gt of CO2 emissions were from fuel combustion in 2016, out of which transport sector contributed ~25%.

In this study, an alternate way of development and implementation of control strategy for torque split of a Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) is proposed. The control strategy evaluates each and every operating point for Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) and electric motor-generator (E-machine) corresponding to all possible torque split combinations at present time instant and finally chooses one combination with the least cost function, which is estimated by converting electrical energy into equivalent fuel consumption[2]. Henceforth, the control strategy is able to perform real time iterations to choose the E-machine and ICE torque combinations with least effective fuel consumption also referred herein to as the optimal operating points. As a result, by running the vehicle at optimal operating points, overall fuel consumption over the complete drive cycle is reduced.

In this paper, a mild hybrid system is studied for Indian drive conditions. The study is focused to first come up with detailed component sizing through simulation. Different features of mild hybrid system are studied for their individual and cumulative contribution in the fuel economy improvement over the base non-hybrid vehicle. Model based development approach has been employed to develop a supervisory control strategy for such a system. Model based design saves time and cost as it gives flexibility to the control engineer to validate the control design at an early stage of development. The supervisory control strategy is first tested in a simulated environment and then, on a vehicle. To prove the system function, a full hybrid vehicle is experimented as a mild hybrid configuration. Experiments are conducted on the test vehicle over MIDC (certification cycle) to understand the impact of mild hybridization on fuel economy and tail pipe emissions