Automobiles are responsible for a substantial part of the world's consumption of primary energy, mostly fossil liquid hydrocarbons. The reduction of the fuel consumption of these vehicles has become a top priority. Many ideas to reach that objective have been presented. In most cases these systems are more complex than the traditional approaches. For such complex systems a heuristic design approach fails. The only way to deal with this situation is to employ model-based methods. This text provides an introduction to the mathematical modeling and subsequent optimization of vehicle propulsion systems and their supervisory control algorithms.

In this book the longitudinal behavior of road vehicles is analyzed. The main emphasis is on the analysis and minimization of the fuel and energy consumption. Most approaches to this problem enhance the complexity of the vehicle system by adding components such as electrical motors or storage devices. Such a complex system can only be designed by means of mathematical models. This text gives an introduction to the modeling and optimization problems typically encountered when designing new propulsion systems for passenger cars. It is intended for persons interested in the analysis and optimization of classical and novel vehicle propulsion systems. Its focus lies on the control-oriented mathematical description of the physical processes and on the model-based optimization of the system structure and of the supervisory control algorithms. This text has evolved from a lecture series at ETH Zurich. Prerequisites are general engineering topics and a first course in optimal control theory.