Energy-saving benefits from plug-in hybrid electric vehicles: perspectives based on real-world measurements

Promoting plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEV) is one important option to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants for road transportation sector. In 2015, more than 220,000 new PHEVs were registered across the world, indicating a 25-fold growth during 2011–2015. However, more criticizes have been put forward against the current energy efficiency regulations for vehicles that are mostly depended on laboratory measurements. To better understand the real-world energy-saving and emission mitigation benefits from PHEVs, we conducted on-road testing experiments under various operating conditions for two in-use PHEVs in Beijing, China. Our results indicate that air condition usage, congested traffic conditions, and higher loading mass could significantly increase energy consumption and shorten actual all-electric distance for PHEVs. For example, the worst case (14.1 km) would occur under harshest usage conditions, which is lower by at least 35% than the claimed range over 20 km. In charge sustaining (CS) mode, real-world fuel consumption also presents a large range from 3.5 L/100 km to 6.3 L/100 km because of varying usage conditions. Furthermore, various vehicle users have significantly different travel profiles, which would lead to large heterogeneity of emission mitigation benefits among individual PHEV adopters. Therefore, this study suggests that the global policy makers should use real-world energy efficiency of emerging electrified powertrain techniques as criteria to formulate relevant regulations and supportive policies.