Particle swarm optimisation for hybrid electric drive-train sizing

Electric hybridisation of vehicles aims at reducing fuel consumption but increases production costs. Hence, automobile manufacturers are confronted with the multi-objective optimisation problem of sizing the drive-train components. In this paper, we evaluated Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) for solving this problem. The results showed that PSO performs significantly better than competing methods. Parameter sensitivities indicated that the optimal solution, the vehicle performance constraints, and the preference between fuel consumption and production cost are intimately coupled. Finally, a Pareto analysis confirmed that a relatively small increase in cost accounts for a majority of the total fuel saving potential.