The transition to electric road transport technologies requires electric traction drive systems to offer improved performances and capabilities, such as fuel efficiency (in terms of MPGe, i.e., miles per gallon of gasoline-equivalent), extended range, and fast-charging options. The enhanced electrification and transformed mobility are translating to a demand for higher power and more efficient electric traction drive systems that lead to better fuel economy for a given battery charge. To accelerate the mass-market adoption of electrified transportation, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in collaboration with the automotive industry, has announced the technical targets for light-duty electric vehicles (EVs) for 2025. This article discusses the electric drive technology trends for passenger electric and hybrid EVs with commercially available solutions in terms of materials, electric machine and inverter designs, maximum speed, component cooling, power density, and performance. The emerging materials and technologies for power electronics and electric motors are presented, identifying the challenges and opportunities for even more aggressive designs to meet the need for next-generation EVs. Some innovative drive and motor designs with the potential to meet the DOE 2025 targets are also discussed.

In this paper, a novel multilevel hybrid inverter is presented. The inverter is based on 2 floating capacitors and 16 active switches for five-level voltage waveform between the output of the inverter and neutral point of DC link. The proposed inverter structure, switching states and commutation scheme for different output voltage levels are presented. The proposed topology is simulated and verified experimentally. The simulation results show that proposed topology can achieve higher efficiency in comparison to state-of-the-art hybrid topologies due to reduced conduction and switching losses at low modulation index and light load conditions. Experimental results show that the converter is successfully operated up to 1 kV DC link voltage and 12 kW output power.