Impact of regenerative braking on hybrid vehicle fuel economy

This study investigates the impact that regenerative braking has on hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) fuel economy using the Autonomie automotive simulation package. Simulations are used to compare the fuel economy of hybrid architectures with regenerative braking effectively enabled and disabled. This study investigates the impact that regenerative braking has on urban, highway and more aggressive driving, concluding that regenerative braking currently has the greatest impact on urban driving. The impact of reducing vehicle mass, rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag are analysed, both individually and together. The study also concludes that in the future, as vehicle resistances decrease, the impact of regenerative braking is going to increase for all three driving scenarios, with the greatest improvement being for the highway driving scenario.