Conventional, hybrid and electric vehicles for Australian driving conditions – Part 1: Technical and financial analysis

Abstract This paper is the first of a two part study which quantifies the economic and greenhouse performance of conventional, hybrid and fully electric passenger vehicles operating in Australian driving conditions. This first study focuses on the total cost of vehicle ownership. Two vehicle sizes are considered, Class-E and Class-B, which bracket the large majority of passenger vehicles on Australian roads. Simulation models of baseline production, conventional vehicles are first developed. These models are then systematically altered to obtain the fuel and/or electricity consumption of equivalent mild hybrid, parallel hybrid, plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles. The total operating cost of each vehicle is then calculated, and the vehicle production costs are estimated by decomposing the vehicles into their major constituent parts. This enables the total cost of vehicle ownership to be estimated, taking particular account of variations in fuel, electricity and battery prices.