xHEV-concept for achieving the 2030 CO2 emission targets

Public perception of the automobile is currently very focused on environmentally sustainable drive trains. Legislation for Europe envisages a 37.5 % reduction in CO2 emissions for passenger car fleets brought to market by 2030, with values towards 55-75 % under discussion. To comply with these ambitious targets, most OEMs anticipate a significant share of vehicles with electric hybridized powertrains (xHEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs). In this study, vehicles belonging to different segments are defined to create a “representative fleet” for a virtual OEM in 2030. Taking into account the diverse use cases (e. g. predominantly city driving vs. long distance commuting) and customer preferences (e. g. low-cost vs. high performance requirements), different powertrain architectures are defined for each vehicle segment. It is shown that a CO2- reduction of 55 % can be achieved in 2030 even with a still rather low BEV share of 15 %, with a chance of achieving 75 % reduction with a BEV share of slightly more than 50 %. In a second step, the real-driving behavior incl. battery charging strategy of the end-user as well as the battery sizing for plug-in-hybrids (PHEVs) are considered. The Hybrid BEV concept is presented as an approach for the D/Esegment to reduce the number of platforms for 2030 and beyond.