There are growing interests in electric and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) because of environmental concerns. Recent efforts are directed toward developing an improved propulsion system for electric and HEVs applications. In a conventional series-parallel HEV, a planetary gear is used to integrate the power of internal combustion engine and two electric machines into the drive train so that the engine can always operate with the highest efficiency while the vehicle runs at any desired speed and torque. However, two electric machines and associated power inverters along with a planetary gear make the HEV drive train much more complicated and bulky in size. Dual-mechanical-port electrical machine (DMPM) is a new breed of energy conversion device with more compact and integrated structure that can potentially realize an efficient electrical variable transmission for HEV applications. This machine can replace the planetary gear and two electric machines of conventional structure in order to make their structures much simpler. Applying a proper power management and control strategy to have a good driving performance for a series-parallel HEV based on DMPM are the main contributions of this paper. Because Toyota Prius II (Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., Torrance, CA, USA) is a well-known series-parallel HEV, the parameters of this vehicle are chosen as a practical example in simulation results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]