Recent Advances in Hybrid, Plug-In, Battery, and Fuel Cell EVs: Control Schemes, Modes, Converter Topologies, and Pros and Cons

Direct current (DC)–DC converters are the backbone of electric vehicle (EV) power trains, enabling efficient and bidirectional energy flow between the battery, high-voltage (HV) DC link, and auxiliary rails under tight isolation, gain, ripple, and electromagnetic interference (EMI) constraints. This review catalogs 29 EV DC–DC converter families and classifies them by isolation requirement, gain window, bidirectionality, and ripple tolerance. On the implementation side, we survey modern control-digital voltage/current-mode (VMC/CMC), model-predictive/model-free, and artificial intelligence (AI)–assisted scheduling-together with protections (device level desaturation/soft turn-off through contactor policy) and thermal/EMI codesign (hot-loop minimization, spread spectrum, common-/differential-mode filtering). Normalized benchmarks at three representative operating points-auxiliary 12–48 V, mid-rail 48–800 V, and traction 350–1000 V show dual active bridge (DAB) and inductor–inductor–capacitor/capacitor–inductor–inductor–capacitor (LLC/CLLC) at 96%–98% for isolated HV links and on-board chargers (OBCs), interleaved buck–boost and multidevice interleaved bidirectional converters (MDIBCs) at 97%–98% for nonisolated bus ties, and multi-input power electronic converters/boost stages (PECs/boost) at 92%–96% with superior source decoupling. We provide a selection matrix mapping battery EV/hybrid EV/plug-in hybrid EV/fuel cell EV (BEV/HEV/PIHEV/FCEV) functions to topologies, a grid-to-vehicle ↔ vehicle-to-grid (G2V↔V2G) mode transition procedure, and 2020–2025 updates (silicon-carbide/gallium-nitride [SiC/GaN] devices, single-/triple-phase shift (SPS/TPS) and variable-frequency scheduling, and predictive/digital control). No single converter is universally optimal; choices balance isolation and gain against ripple limits, control complexity, EMI/thermal budgets, and cost.