However, for most commuters a relatively small 40 kilometer battery package will be sufficient to travel to work and back. (Gilijamse,2009).Ī main problem of the usage of PHEVs is the space required for the battery and the mass increase of the vehicle due to the batteries. However, the car manufacturing industry expects that PHEVs will be introduced to the market first, and that the switch to BEV could be made when the PHEVs are found to be economically and technological viable.
A possible drawback of the PHEV is that it contains two systems to propel the vehicle, making it more costly to build than a BEV. PHEVs have no limitation of the driving range and if the recharging infrastructure is spatially or temporally unavailable, it doesn’t restrict the use of the vehicle.
The key advantage of PHEV technology relative to full Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) is the fuel flexibility. In this 20 year period the IC engine is expected to improve substantially (Sharpe et al. However, in the coming 20 years or so vehicles will probably still be equipped with IC engines, possibly in combination with electric engines, because per unit of weight an ICE vehicle can still drive about 40 times further. For this reason it is expected that the electric vehicle will replace the ICE vehicle in the long run. (Pesaran et.al, 2009) The PHEV can run either on its Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) or on its battery.Ī full electric vehicle uses its energy far more efficiently than a vehicle with an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) and can drive about 2.5 times further with the same energy. A plug in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is a hybrid electric vehicle with the ability to recharge its energy storage with electricity from an off-board power source such as a grid.