Abstract
Hybrid electric vehicles have shown great potential for enhancing fuel economy and reducing emissions. Deriving a power management control policy to distribute the power demanded by the driver optimally to the available subsystems (e.g., the internal combustion engine, motor, generator, and battery) has been a challenging control problem. One of the main aspects of the power management control algorithms is concerned with the self-sustainability of the electrical path, which must be guaranteed for the entire driving cycle. This paper considers the problem of identifying online the power required by the battery to maintain the state of charge within a range of the target value. An algorithm is presented that realizes how much power the engine needs to provide to the battery so that self-sustainability of the electrical path is maintained.