Integrated fuzzy linguistic preference relations approach and fuzzy Quality Function Deployment to the sustainable design of hybrid electric vehicles

Abstract

Through the prevalence of sustainable ideas, automobiles are increasingly pursuing environmental protection strategies for green design, the non-traditional hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) are promoted continuously. If the company can add emotional value to the modeling of HEV, it will be helpful to its sustainable design and sales promotion of it. Therefore, an innovative model combining fuzzy linguistic preference relations (FLPR) and fuzzy quality function deployment (QFD) is proposed here to explore the connection between customer sentiment and the front view of the HEV. Compared with the previous methods, FLPR has the advantages of fewer comparison times and high consistency. First, find out the customer’s emotional expectations and attribute weight ranking for HEV through FLPR, and import customer requirements (CRs) on the left side of fuzzy QFD. Second, the grey prediction model was used to screen out the key engineering features (ECs) and the initial weight of HEV. Finally, based on human subjective imprecise natural semantics, fuzzy QFD established a matrix association between CRs and key ECs, then finally obtained the optimal combination of ECs' final weight and morphological design. The results can assist designers to shorten product development cycles and improve customers' emotional satisfaction, which provides a theoretical reference for the sustainable design and marketing of environmentally friendly cars in the future.