Environmental concern, fuel efficiency and new market trends push automotive companies, governments and research institutes to explore environmentally-friendly, efficient and sustainable personal and public transportation solutions. Automotive industry is following this trend developing new eco-friendly, smart, and connected vehicles. In this scenario, powertrains are one of vehicle subsystems undergoing several changes in architecture and implementation in favor of electric and hybrid solutions. These innovations within the automotive domain are driven by embedded systems and software solutions. It can be observed that the costs for embedded solutions in vehicles are growing rapidly while mechanical engineering based solutions are stagnating in importance. The motivations of this thesis work are inserted in context related to the new trends of the automotive industry.