In order to enhance the fuel economy of plug-in fuel cell vehicles, the electric energy consumption rate of the traction battery is controlled by adjusting the objective cost function through the adaptive rule of equivalent coefficient S and driving range based on the equivalent hydrogen consumption minimization strategy (ECMS). Meanwhile the reference SOC is introduced to modify the equivalent coefficient for enabling the traction battery get as much electric energy as possible from power grid in the course of driving, and avoiding the excessive discharge of the battery, thus to achieve the adaptiveness of the control strategy to various driving ranges. Then the simulation model for the plug-in fuel cell vehicle is established with Matlab/Simulink and the results of simulation show that when the mileage exceeds the pure electric driving range, the strategy can control the traction battery with its SOC reaching the target value at the end of driving course. The results of contrastive hardware-in-the-loop test indicate that the hydrogen consumptions in the total mileage of 100,150 and 200 km with mileage adaptive ECMS are 8.75%, 14.21% and 16.63% respectively less than that with CD-CS-based ECMS. © 2019, Society of Automotive Engineers of China. All right reserved.