A critical element to the success of new propulsion technologies that enable reductions in fuel use is the integration of component thermal management technologies within a viable vehicle package. Vehicle operation requires vehicle thermal management systems capable of balancing the needs of multiple vehicle systems that may require heat for operation, require cooling to reject heat, or require...

Hybrid electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and battery electric vehicles offer the potential to reduce both oil imports and greenhouse gases, as well as to offer a financial benefit to the driver. However, assessing these potential benefits is complicated by several factors, including the driving habits of the operator. We focus on driver aggression, i.e., the level of accelera...

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is currently conducting a long-term project to promote the development of grid-connected, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) for the commercial automotive market. This collaborative effort with partners in electric utilities, the automotive industry and government includes subtasks of specification development, prototype vehicle design and cons...

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S. light-duty vehicle fleet. GHG emissions from PHEVs and other vehicles depend on both vehicle design and driver behavior. We pose a twice-differentiable, factorable mixed-integer nonlinear programming model utilizing vehicle physics simulation, battery degradation data, and U.S. driving d...

With the perspective of a future widespread penetration of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) imminent challenges arise. Since an uncontrolled way of vehicle charging might impose additional system strain by adding up on existing peak-demands, there exists the necessity to find a charging management procedure, which is beneficial in terms of grid operation and cost. In this thesis a centralized c...

To expand markets for plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) beyond enthusiastic early adopters, investments must be strategic. This research characterizes a segment of EV adoption that points the way toward mainstream: consumers with low or no initial interest in EVs, “EV Converts.” Logistic regression is utilized to profile Convert demographic, household, and regional characteristics; vehicle-transa...

Hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric vehicles--known collectively as electric drive vehicles (EDVs)--may represent a clean and affordable option to meet growing U.S. light duty vehicle (LDV) demand. The goal of this study is 2-fold: identify the conditions under which EDVs achieve high LDV market penetration in the U.S. and quantify the associated change in CO2, SO2, and NOX emissions t...