Patent ID: 9248830
Filing Date: 2016-02-02
CPC Classification: B60K,B60W,F02D,Y02T,Y10S

Claim Text:
1. A control apparatus of a hybrid vehicle that is applied to a hybrid vehicle that comprises, as power sources for propulsion, an internal combustion engine that has an exhaust purification catalyst that purifies its exhaust and that can be changed over between lean combustion and stoichiometric combustion and an electric motor, and that is capable of operating in a plurality of modes including an EV mode in which the internal combustion engine is stopped and the electric motor is driven, a lean combustion mode in which the internal combustion engine is operated with the lean combustion, and a stoichiometric combustion mode in which the internal combustion engine is operated with the stoichiometric combustion; and comprising a mode selection device configured to select preferentially, from the plurality of modes, that mode for which the system efficiency in relation to the requested power is the highest; wherein, under a condition that the system efficiency is higher for the lean combustion mode as compared to the EV mode and moreover is lower for the stoichiometric combustion mode as compared to the EV mode, the mode selection device selects the stoichiometric combustion mode when the temperature of the exhaust purification catalyst is less than or equal to a first predetermined value.