Fuel economy‐oriented trajectory tracking control strategy for plug‐in hybrid electric buses

Most of the existing trajectory tracking control strategies for vehicles aim at achieving high tracking accuracy but ignore energy consumption and road geometry. This paper proposes a fuel economy-oriented trajectory tracking control strategy for plug-in hybrid electric buses to improve fuel economy while ensuring tracking accuracy under different road geometries in the real world. First, a reference trajectory is reconstructed for trajectory tracking control to simulate the road geometry in real world. Next, a tracking controller based on model predictive control and proportional–integral control is developed to track the reference trajectory. Finally, an optimal control strategy with target preview method based on Pontryagin's minimum principle is developed to achieve the optimal fuel economy while tracking the trajectory. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed control strategy can realize not only excellent trajectory tracking performance but also optimal fuel economy.