Operational cost analysis of fuel cell electric vehicles under different powertrain-sizing configurations

This paper presents an operation cost analysis of a fuel cell/battery-based plug-in hybrid electric vehicle under different sizing configurations. Specifically, the size of major energy source (e.g. the fuel cell system) is kept constant while altering the battery capacity. Dynamic programming is then employed to extract the vehicle’s operation costs imposed by the consumption of hydrogen and electricity power. Afterwards, a numerical analysis of the impacts on fuel economy, fuel cell durability, battery energy utilization rate is conducted, so as to provide useful guidelines to facilitate the powertrain design and the development of corresponding energy management strategies.