ABSTRACT Today, nearly half of the world population lives in urban areas. As the world population continues to migrate to urban areas for increased economic opportunities, addressing personal mobility challenges such as air pollution, Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) and traffic congestion in these regions will become even a greater challenge especially in rapidly growing nations. Road transportation is a major source of air pollution in urban areas causing numerous health concerns. Improvements in automobile technology over the past several decades have resulted in reducing conventional vehicle tailpipe emissions to exceptionally low levels. This transformation has been attained mainly through advancements in engine and transmission technologies and through partial electrification of vehicles. However, the technological advancements made so far alone will not be able to mitigate the issues due to increasing GHGs and air pollution in urban areas. Electrification of propulsion systems may play a significant role in overcoming the challenges associated with personal urban mobility. Electric vehicles are particularly suited for use in urban areas since city transportation is mainly characterized by relatively short driving distances, low continuous power requirements, long idling times and high availability of regenerative braking energy. These characteristics, when carefully incorporated into the design process, create valuable opportunities for developing clean, efficient and cost effective urban vehicle propulsion systems. In this paper, various urban propulsion systems architectures that can address these challenges are presented. These architectures are incorporated into a vehicle math model and they are analyzed. Various advanced propulsion system architectures are presented and their benefits relative to conventional propulsion systems are assessed. Strengths and weaknesses of different designs are assessed relative to conventional propulsion systems on thebasis of metrics such as well-to-wheel energy conversion efficiency, GHG emissions and vehicle functionality. INTRODUCTION Over the past several decades, urbanization of the world's population has rapidly increased due to economic opportunities and studies suggest that this trend will continue in the future across the globe and particularly in less developed regions as shown in Figure 1(a) [ 1]. Furthermore, as the global standard of living increases, the global vehicle parc increases more rapidly as shown in Figure 1(b) [ 1]. The latest International Energy Outlook of the US Department of Energy predicts worldwide transportation energy demand will increase at an annual growth rate of 2.7%from 2006 to 2030. Eventually, this trend will increase the global energy and vehicle demand. Megacities are increasing in number, size and geographical spread and are moving well beyond the ten million mark as shown in Figure 2(a) [ 2]. This growing trend will be particularly significant in the less developed world. They create a major development challenge contributing immensely to global warming, environmental pollution and poor urban life quality. The place of transport in megacity sustainability is critical. Studies show that road transportation is a major source of local air pollution especially in urban areas and vehicle exhaust emissions have been the cause of cardio-pulmonary disease and related health concerns [ 3]. Urban personal mobility has emerged as one of the major challenges that need to be addressed. The major challenges associated with personal urban mobility and possible solutions to address these challenges are depicted in Figure 2(b). Traffic congestion has a major impact on vehicle fuel consumption and emissions. In addition, maneuverability and parking are other major issues in urban areas. Vehicles should have lower foot print without compromising interior space to address these challenges. Analytical Evaluation of Propulsion System Architectures for Future Urban Veh