RELATED APPLICATION(S)

The present application claims priority of Japanese Patent Application No. 2018-191016, filed Oct. 9, 2018, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.

FIELD

The present disclosure relates to a control device for a hybrid vehicle and to a control system for a hybrid vehicle.

BACKGROUND

Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2018-100035 discloses a hybrid vehicle configured to use a history of outputs (driving loads) of a plurality of vehicles collected at a cloud server to calculate an output of a scheduled driving route of a host vehicle and performs catalyst heating control in preparation for an internal combustion engine being started due to an increase in the vehicle demanded output in a high load area where the calculated output is larger than a predetermined threshold value.

SUMMARY

However, the data of the output collected at the cloud server disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2018-100035 was not data linked with the vehicle speed. Therefore, data obtained when driving on the scheduled driving route by different vehicle speeds, such as data of output when congestion occurred at a scheduled driving route, data of output when no congestion occurred, etc., were mixed together. For this reason, a discrepancy easily arose between the output of the scheduled driving route of the host vehicle calculated using the history of outputs of the plurality of vehicles collected at the cloud server and the output of the host vehicle when actually driving on the scheduled driving route and it was liable to become unable to perform catalyst heating control at a suitable timing in preparation for an increase in the vehicle demanded output.

The present disclosure was made in consideration of such a problem and has as its object to enable performance of catalyst heating control at a suitable timing in preparation for an increase in the vehicle demanded output.

To solve the above problem, according to one aspect of the present disclosure, there is provided a control device for a hybrid vehicle for controlling a hybrid vehicle which is provided with an internal combustion engine provided with a catalyst device for purifying exhaust discharged from an engine body, a rotating electric machine driven by electric power of a battery, and a communication device configured to be able to communicate with a server storing values of a parameter relating to outputs of a plurality of vehicles when the plurality of vehicles are driving over a preset plurality of road sections linked with vehicle speeds at that time and collected for each road section and which is able to be driven by the output of at least one of the internal combustion engine and the rotating electric machine. The control device comprises a driving control part using the output of the internal combustion engine as part of the drive power and driving the vehicle by the outputs of the internal combustion engine and the rotating electric machine if when making the internal combustion engine stop and driving by the output of the rotating electric machine, the vehicle demanded output becomes an engine start output or more. The driving control part is configured to acquire a value of the parameter linked with a vehicle speed of the same extent as the scheduled vehicle speed when driving over a road section present on a scheduled driving route as a driving road section for each driving road section from the server and to calculate the scheduled vehicle demanded output when driving over the driving road section based on the acquired value of the parameter for each driving road section or to acquire from the server the scheduled vehicle demanded output for each driving road section calculated based on the value of the parameter for each driving road section at the server so as to heat the catalyst device before using the output of the internal combustion engine as part of the drive power when there is a driving road section where the scheduled vehicle demanded output becomes the engine start output or more.

Further, according to another aspect of the present disclosure, there is provided a control system for a hybrid vehicle able to be driven by at least one of outputs of an internal combustion engine provided with a catalyst device for purifying exhaust discharged from an engine body and a rotating electric machine driven by electric power of a battery. The control system comprises a server storing values of a parameter relating to outputs of a plurality of vehicles including the hybrid vehicle when the plurality of vehicles are driving over a preset plurality of road sections linked with vehicle speeds at that time and collected for each road section, a communication device mounted in the hybrid vehicle and able to communicate with the server, and a control device mounted in the hybrid vehicle and using the output of the internal combustion engine as part of the drive power to thereby drive the hybrid vehicle by the outputs of the internal combustion engine and the rotating electric machine if when making the internal combustion engine stop and driving by the output of the rotating electric machine, the vehicle demanded output becomes an engine start output or more. The control device is configured to acquire a value of the parameter linked with a vehicle speed of the same extent as the scheduled vehicle speed when driving over a road section present on a scheduled driving route of the hybrid vehicle as a driving road section for each driving road section from the server and to calculate the scheduled vehicle demanded output when driving over the driving road section based on the acquired value of the parameter for each driving road section or to acquire from the server the scheduled vehicle demanded output for each driving road section calculated based on the value of the parameter for each driving road section at the server and to heat the catalyst device before using the output of the internal combustion engine as part of the drive power when there is a driving road section where the scheduled vehicle demanded output becomes the engine start output or more.

According to these aspects of the present disclosure, it is possible to perform catalyst heating control at a suitable timing in preparation for an increase in vehicle demanded output.

