Assessment of a Second Life City Vehicle Refurbished to Include Hybrid Powertrain Technology

Due to increased powertrain efficiency, electrified propulsion has seen significant diffusion in the automotive sector in recent years. Despite the possible reduction in tailpipe CO2 emissions, the advancements in the technology are not sufficient to tackle the challenge of global greenhouse emissions. An additional action could be the use of second life vehicles to drastically reduce the emissions associated with vehicle manufacturing and recycling/disposal. Urban vehicles are the most suitable to be electrified due to the large start-and-stop cycling and the possibility of using regenerative braking. Therefore, this work considered the hypothesis of hybridizing a small size passenger car with parallel and Series technology. The powertrain is designed for an old vehicle suitable for second life use after refurbishment. A numerical model of the propulsion components was built and applied after previous validation in homologation conditions. Several urban cycles representative of European cities were considered. The final hybrid model is compared with two baselines: non-hybrid and pure electric version already lunched in the market by the manufacturer. The findings indicate that used HEV cars could be a viable option for cutting CO2 emissions from city vehicles without reducing their range. In comparison to non-hybrid vehicles, the series can typically reduce CO2 emissions by 41%, compared to the P2's 32%.