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Nowadays, electric vehicles represent a promising solution for reducing the fuel consumption (and thus the carbon dioxide emission) and the pollutant emissions of road vehicles, especially in highly congested urban areas, although their driving range and usability still limit the customer acceptance even for a city car application. Extended-range electric vehicles may partly overcome these limitations, having an auxiliary power unit which can provide electrical energy to the powertrain once the battery has been depleted. On the other hand, the operations of such an auxiliary power unit should be almost completely unnoticeable in order to avoid any impacts on the electric driving experience, resulting in considerably reduced drive-related noise. Therefore the aim of this work is the design, through numerical simulation, of a powertrain controller capable of minimizing the carbon dioxide emission of a range-extended electric vehicle and, at the same time, avoiding any discomfort for the passenger related to the auxiliary power unit operations. Starting from the development of a powertrain controller focused on minimization of the carbon dioxide emission of the vehicle, the main noise targets will be defined and their effects on the energy management system will be analysed.