Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) combined with more than one power source offer additional flexibility to improve the fuel economy and to reduce pollutant emissions. The dynamic-programming-based supervisory controller (DPSC) presented here investigates the fuel economy improvement and emissions reduction potential and demonstrates the trade-off between fuel economy and the emission of nitrogen oxides (NO x) for a state-of-charge-sustaining parallel HEV. A weighted cost function consisting of fuel economy and emissions is proposed in this paper. Any possible engine-motor power pairs meeting with the power requirement is considered to minimize the weighted cost function over the given driving cycles through this dynamic program algorithm. The fuel-economy-only case, the NO x-only case, and the fuel-NO x case have been achieved by adjusting specific weighting factors, which demonstrates the flexibility and advantages of the DPSC. Compared with operating the engine in the NO x-only case, there is 17.4 per cent potential improvement in the fuel-economy-only case. The fuel-NO x case yields a 15.2 per cent reduction in NO x emission only at the cost of 5.5 per cent increase in fuel consumption compared with the fuel-economy-only case.