Electrified road transport through plug-in hybrid powertrains: Compliance by simulation of CO2 specific emission targets with real driving cycles

•PHEV technological solution could be the optimal one to reach CO2 specific emission reduction targets at 2030.•A differentiated experimental driving cycle, split into urban and extra-urban phases, has been created by analysis of two-thousand of real daily driving cycles.•Real data outline urban and extra-urban transport phases, with distances, idle times, speed profiles and related average values.•A recharging time compliant with daily scheduling besides elimination of range and recharge anxiety emerge fluently.•PHEV configured as a P2 powertrain architecture, when daily or regularly recharged, runs an outstanding experimental cycle in terms of gCO2/km.•Specific emissions on a 100 km long highway cycle fall in the range 42–48 gCO2/km.•Considering the same vehicle model, PHEV emits 71% less tank-to-wheel CO2 than ICE counterpart in one year.•Small batteries result to be less impacting on the electric grid, on queuing phenomena for recharging, and on costs, both in case of substitution and for slow recharging. Worldwide targets on specific CO2 emissions (g/km) seem to make the use of internal combustion engines (ICE) prohibitive when adopting conventional driving cycles concerning road transport. This research comes therefore from the necessity of an accurate analysis of the real driving habits in order to evaluate whether its implementation on an alternative powertrain, suitable to differentiate urban (local zero emissions) and extra-urban travels (highest performances of ICEs, even better than electric motors when contemplating the entire energy chain), can guarantee the compliance with specific CO2 emissions reduction legislation; this last has been introduced with the aim of containing or even erasing global emissions from the transport sector in next years. After an overview of all the main available technological alternatives, as regards powertrains, the Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV) solution has been analysed. An experimental driving cycle is proposed by combining representative cycles obtained from a previous study, based on data provided by FCA, now Stellantis, where a clustering procedure has been applied to a sample of over two-thousand real journeys made in 2015 and 2016 in all Europe with conventional automobiles; appropriate ranges of distance, time, average speed in urban and extra urban conditions, idle times and stops have been identified thanks to a statistical analysis and the cycle has been created with all of these requirements to be as similar