There is a wide range of technological options to reduce CO_2 emissions of passenger cars; e.g., improvements of fuel economy of internal combustion engines (ICE), hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), fuel cell vehicle (FCV), electric vehicle (EV), and bioethanol. Among them, we focused on plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) because PHEV is expected to be deployed commercially in near future. Besides, PHEV is compatible with bioethanol and also can make a bridge to either FCV or EV in future. PHEV is a kind of HEV with increased capacity of battery which can be charged by electric grid; the battery of current HEV is charged only by the engine on board. PHEV is assumed to have several tens km of all-electric driving range depending on the capacity of the battery on board. PHEV has advantage over EV in saving the capacity of expensive battery while keeping driving range long; PHEV does not require a new infrastructure for fueling while FCV needs hydrogen fueling system; PHEV can reduce other air pollutions as well as CO_2.
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