The cost of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) (e.g., Toyota Prius or Ford Fusion Hybrid) remains several thousand dollars higher than the cost of comparable conventional vehicles, which has limited HEV market penetration. The battery energy storage device is typically the component with the greatest contribution toward this cost increment, so significant cost reductions/performance improvements to the energy storage system (ESS) can improve the vehicle-level cost-benefit relationship, which would in turn lead to larger HEV market penetration and greater aggregate fuel savings. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) collaborated with a United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC) Workgroup to analyze trade-offs between vehicle fuel economy and reducing the minimum energy requirement for power-assist HEVs. NREL's analysis showed that significant fuel savings could still be delivered from an ESS with much lower energy storage than previous targets, which prompted the United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC) to issue a new set of lower-energy ESS (LEESS) targets that could be satisfied by a variety of technologies, including high-power batteries or ultracapacitors. NREL has developed an HEV test platform for in-vehicle performance and fuel economy validation testing of the hybrid system using such LEESS devices. This presentation describes development of the vehicle test platform and in-vehicle evaluation results using a lithium-ion capacitor ESS-an asymmetric electrochemical energy storage device possessing one electrode with battery-type characteristics (lithiated graphite) and one with ultracapacitor-type characteristics (carbon). Further efforts include testing other ultracapacitor technologies in the HEV test platform.