VEHICLE CONTROL APPARATUS AND METHOD THEREOF

A vehicle control apparatus is provided that includes an engine, a battery, a processor, and a memory. The processor predicts a change in speed of a vehicle according to a route of the vehicle, divides the route into a plurality of sections using the change in speed, obtains power information of the vehicle which will vary based on the change in speed. The processor then, for each of the plurality of sections, determines reference power to maintain driving of the engine while driving the vehicle in each of the plurality of sections, using the power information corresponding to each of the plurality of sections, and controls the vehicle, based on at least one of an electric vehicle (EV) mode determined according to the reference power or a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) mode determined according to the reference power, or any combination thereof.