A review of powertrain domain design for new energy vehicles

Yingshuai Liu, X G Li, Xiaobo Huang, X Tian, Jun Tan

The powertrain domain serves as the neural command center of new energy vehicles orchestrating the seamless integration of propulsion, energy storage, and thermal management subsystems. This review provides a systematic examination of powertrain domain design, tracing its evolution from distributed electronic control units (ECUs) architectures to highly centralized domain controller paradigms. We analyze critical design dimensions including hardware time-division multiplexing, software modularization based on AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture (AUTOSAR) architecture, atomic service functions, big-data-driven services, and cybersecurity frameworks. Furthermore, we discuss emerging trends such as multi-in-one highly integrated drivetrains, 1000 V high-voltage platforms, 30,000 revolutions per minute (RPM) ultra-high-speed motors, and cross-domain fusion architectures. The findings reveal that powertrain domain controllers have reduced component counts by over 60%, cut costs by approximately 30%, and enabled over-the-air (OTA) upgrade capabilities, fundamentally reshaping the competitive landscape of the automotive industry. Following PRISMA guidelines, this review systematically analyzed 100 publications from Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, SAE Mobilus, and CNKI databases (2019–2025). This paper synthesizes current research advances and identifies future research directions for powertrain domain intelligence.