Abstract
A great deal of research and development work has been done on electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) in recent years. As a result, EVs and HEVs have been greatly evolved for latest 30 years. Their performance has been improved to 3 or 4 times. Why do they have got such a good performance? A look at the course of research over the years shows that the reason is significant progress in power electronics technologies. In order to spread EVs and HEVs, the technologies will become more important in the future.
