For a plug-in hybrid vehicle,its significant but difficult to achieve both good fuel economy result and good drivability performance,how to get the balance is a challenge.The FAWs C-class parallel plug-in hybrid vehicle is mentioned in this paper,it has one electrical motor and three clutches,one clutch which is used to separate or connect the engine and the motor is integrated in the electrical motor,therefor the hybrid engine start type can be performed by the coordination between this clutch and the electrical motor,the other two clutches belong to dual clutch transmission.In addition,the conventional engine start type can be also provided as the vehi-cle is equipped with a conventional starter.In order to achieve good performance,various engine start conditions should be taken into consideration,these conditions can be summarized as different aspects,such as performance related,drivability related,high voltage battery related,fuel consumption and emission related,safety related and external related aspects.Considering the fuel economy it is recommended to extend the electric driv-ing region in charge depleting mode with the help of using the conventional engine start type,the reason is that the engine start torque provided by electrical motor is not necessary to be reserved for a conventional engine start type.In charge sustain mode the hybrid engine start type can be used as the primary start type for most cases such as constant speed driving,slow acceleration and so on,but for rapid acceleration conditions such as tip in or kick down,the conventional start type should be performed in order to fulfill the drivability request.Dyno and road driving tests have been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the defined engine start strategy in this system,the experimental results show that based on the defined engine start strategy,good fuel economy and good drivability results are achieved.