Optimisation of hybrid vehicles operation with ON/OFF strategy

In the last years, many papers already addressed the analysis of techniques for optimizing energy management on-board hybrid vehicles. However, the large majority of them focused on detailed analyses for specific architectures, suggesting algorithms valid only for them. This paper, on the contrary, performs a basic analysis and tries to find general rules, adequate for a large variety of hybrid vehicles. In particular, strategies to minimize fuel consumption using ON/OFF technique to manage the ICE have been analysed, investigating whether these last are effectively useful, considering also the costs associated to each engine start-up. At the end, some practical case studies have been considered, to verify the validity of the general proposed approach.