HYBRID LIGHT DUTY VEHICLES EVALUATION PROGRAM

A HEV evaluation program, funded by ADEME, was carried out by a group of Laboratories of different specialties in order to evaluate and compare consumption, emission and component technologies of the three first HEVs put on the market (Toyota Prius, Nissan Tino and Honda Insight). This paper presents the results obtained until now. These results show good consumption and emission performance of the tested vehicles compared to conventional ones. The energy management seems to be globally the same for the three vehicles excepting for cold startswhere the Insight allows a very earlier stop of the engine compared to the Tino and especially to the Prius. A mapping of the engine consumption of the Prius and the Insight was performed in order to furnish data for the simulation models. The Permanent Magnet motorsof the Prius and Tino have different number of pair poles and then different emf at a given speed. The low emf values of the Prius allow operation at high speed with less field weakening control than for the Tino. The inverters of the Prius and the Tino, controlled by a PWM at respectively 5 kHz and 7 kHz. switching frequency, are made of IGBTs with high commutation performances.