Impact of battery size and energy cost on the market acceptance of blended plug-in hybrid electric vehicles

The blended plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) have sprung up in the private car market. However, many consumers are not clear about whether PHEVs will save cost for their ownership and the government and the automakers need to take effective measures to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of PHEVs to promote and popularize PHEVs. This paper investigates the usage data collected from PHEV owners using the same vehicle model of BYD Qin in Shanghai, China, and estimates the TCO of PHEVs considering the acquisition and operation costs. By comparing the TCO with ICE vehicles, it is found that the TCO of ICE vehicles is lower than PHEVs. Optimizing the battery capacity is a feasible way to reduce the TCO of PHEVs, e.g., if the battery capacity is optimized as 20 kWh, the TCO would be reduced by about 6.2%. Besides, the TCO of PHEVs is more sensitive to the fluctuation of the fuel and electricity price.