Actual Electricity Utility Factor of Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles in Typical Chinese Cities Considering Charging Pattern Heterogeneity

The actual energy saving effect of plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) is usually evaluated by the electricity utility factor (UF) in a standardized charging pattern. To further evaluate the impacts of the charging pattern heterogeneity of PHEV, actual vehicle travel data are adopted to classify the charging pattern in seven typical Chinese cities and derive its impacts on actual UF. Additionally, UF curves are fitted as power exponential functions. The result shows that during daily usage, UF can reach over 0.8 for 50 km all-electric-range PHEVs for the 77% frequently charging adopters, while it is as low as 0.1 for the 3% rarely charging adopters. Comprehensive UF values at an actual charging pattern are 0.53 and 0.68 for the 50 km and 80 km all-electric-range PHEVs, and the values are 0.03 and 0.04 smaller than the standard UF, respectively.