This invention relates to control of a hybrid vehicle which changes over between EV running and HEV running.
JP-A-H7-75210 published by the Japanese Patent Office in 1995 discloses a hybrid vehicle provided with a generator, an engine which drives this generator, a motor which drives the vehicle, and a battery. This hybrid vehicle switches between EV running where the motor is driven only with the electric power stored in the battery without operating the engine, and HEV running where the engine is operated and at least one of the engine or the motor is used to run the vehicle.
One advantage of hybrid vehicles is EV running which is silent and pollution-free. It is desirable to perform EV running in a specific place and a specific time zone. For example, if HEV running where the engine is operated is performed when going to the office in the early morning from home or returning late at night, the noise emitted by the engine may annoy the neighborhood, but in the case of EV running, there will be little noise and the neighborhood will not be annoyed.
It is therefore an object of this invention to make an area centered on a home or company as an EV running area, and to enable EV running when traveling from the home to the office early in the morning or when returning late at night.
In order to achieve above object, this invention provides a hybrid vehicle which includes a generator, an engine which drives the generator, a motor which drives the vehicle and a battery connected to the generator and motor, and performs EV running wherein the vehicle runs under the motor driven with electric power stored in the battery without operating the engine, and HEV running wherein the engine is operated and the vehicle runs under at least one of the engine and the motor, comprising an external charge device which charges the battery using an external power supply, a map information device which includes map data and recognizes the present position of the vehicle on the map data, and a controller.
The controller functions to register a point at which the external power supply is installed in the map data in the map information device as a base point, register an EV running area centered on the base point in the map data in the map information device based on a charge value of the battery, and perform EV running when the vehicle is in the EV running area.
The details as well as other features and advantages of this invention are set forth in the remainder of the specification and are shown in the accompanying drawings.