Various applications for use of mass estimations of a vehicle, including to control operation of the vehicle, sharing the mass estimation with other vehicles and/or a Network Operations Center (NOC), organizing vehicles operating in a platoon and/or partially controlling the operation of one or more vehicles operating in a platoon based on the relative mass estimations between the platooning vehicles. When vehicles are operating in a platoon, the relative mass between a lead and a following vehicle may be used to scale torque and/or brake commands generated by the lead vehicle and sent to the following vehicle.

In a hybrid vehicle, when the engine is started and caused to make a transition from a stopped state into an operating state, the control device performs an operation control of the rotary machine and an output control of the engine to increase the rotation speed of the engine so that the rotation speed reaches a target rotation speed after the transition of the engine into the operating state, determined by the shifting control, and during increasing the rotation speed, when suppression conditions further including a condition that a vehicle speed is equal to or lower than a predetermined vehicle speed, and a condition that an output request amount by a driver is smaller than a predetermined output request amount, are satisfied, the control device suppresses an increase rate of the rotation speed until a predetermined time elapses from an initiation of starting of the engine as compared with when the suppression conditions are not satisfied.

Various applications for use of mass estimations of a vehicle, including to control operation of the vehicle, sharing the mass estimation with other vehicles and/or a Network Operations Center (NOC), organizing vehicles operating in a platoon and/or partially controlling the operation of one or more vehicles operating in a platoon based on the relative mass estimations between the platooning vehicles. When vehicles are operating in a platoon, the relative mass between a lead and a following vehicle may be used to scale torque and/or brake commands generated by the lead vehicle and sent to the following vehicle.

A hybrid vehicle and method for operating such a hybrid vehicle. The hybrid vehicle includes an internal combustion engine, an electric machine, an electric storage device, and a control system. The method includes determining a power currently available of the electric storage device by the control system when a current state of charge of the electric storage device is less than a charge threshold value; activating the internal combustion engine when the determined power currently available from the electric storage device exceeds a first power threshold; and determining the power currently available from the electric storage device by the control system when the determined power currently available from the electric storage device is less than the first power threshold.

An automatic parking control device is configured to: execute a rotation prediction process to calculate a predicted idle speed change portion by advancing an actual idle speed change portion by a brake response delay time; execute a driving force prediction process to calculate a predicted driving force change portion according to the predicted idle speed change portion; execute a braking force control process to calculate a change portion of a target vehicle braking force that cancels the predicted driving force change portion and instruct it to a brake device; and, when the brake response delay time is longer than an engine response delay time, execute a rotational speed control delay process to delay a target idle speed change by a rotational speed control delay time being longer than or equal to a difference obtained by subtracting the engine response delay time from the brake response delay time.

A shift control device has stepless and stepped shift modes in which a transmission gear ratio of a continuously variable transmission is controlled in stepless and stepwise fashions, respectively, and includes a shift controller that switches the shift mode to the stepless shift mode by executing shift control of the transmission if an accelerator-pedal operated amount falls below a switch threshold during the stepped shift mode, a minimum value detector that detects an operated-amount minimum value in a shift process of switching the shift mode to the stepless shift mode, and an upper-limit-value setting unit that sets an upper limit value for engine rotational acceleration based on a difference between the operated amount and the minimum value in the shift process. In the shift process, the shift controller limits the rotational acceleration to the upper limit value or lower by limiting a shift rate when the transmission is downshifted.

A traveling mode setting unit configured to cause a shift to shift to a second traveling mode via a third traveling mode based on a traveling state of the vehicle traveling in the first traveling mode. The internal combustion engine control unit includes a derivation unit configured to derive a second rotational speed of the internal combustion engine at the time of transition from the third traveling mode to the second traveling mode based on a first rotational speed of the internal combustion engine at the time of transition from the first traveling mode to the third traveling mode, the traveling state of the vehicle and the second reduction ratio, and the internal combustion engine control unit is configured to control a third rotational speed of the internal combustion engine in the third traveling mode to be a value between the first rotational speed and the second rotational speed.

A control device includes an internal combustion engine control unit configured to control an internal combustion engine. The internal combustion engine control unit is configured to, in a case where a first traveling mode, increase a rotational speed of the internal combustion engine in accordance with an increase in a speed of a vehicle and when the rotational speed reaches a predetermined first rotational speed, decrease the rotational speed to a second rotational speed lower than the first rotational speed, calculate a decrease rate of the rotational speed of the internal combustion engine per unit time when the rotational speed is decreased from the first rotational speed to the second rotational speed, and in a case where the traveling mode setting unit shifts from the first traveling mode to the second traveling mode, decrease the rotational speed of the internal combustion engine based on the decrease rate.

A control device of a vehicle configured to travel on a plurality of travel modes includes an internal combustion engine control unit and a travel mode control unit. When a difference between a rotation speed of an internal combustion at a time when a transition condition is satisfied and a predicted rotation speed is equal to or larger than a threshold value, the internal combustion engine control unit performs rotation speed control such that the rotation speed of the internal combustion engine approaches the predicted rotation speed, and the travel mode control unit shifts a travel mode to a second travel mode after the rotation speed control of the internal combustion engine control unit is completed. The rotation speed control is control in which the rotation speed is changed in a plurality of stages so as to approach the predicted rotation speed.

A controls system for a range-extended electric vehicle comprising an overall system control unit, an engine control module configured to control a range extender of the range-extended electric vehicle, power electronics configured to control a generator of the range-extended electric vehicle, and a supervisory control module coupled between the overall system control unit and the engine control module and the power electronics, the supervisory control module configured to receive information from the overall system control unit and provide commands to the engine control module and the power electronics.