Abstract Gas turbine systems are among potential energy converters to substitute the internal combustion engine in future series hybrid electric vehicle. Fuel consumption of these powertrains strongly relies on the energy converter efficiency, the energy management strategy deployed on-board as well as on the transient operation during start-up phase. This paper presents a dynamic modeling and the fuel consumption calculation of an intercooled regenerative reheat gas turbine system used as an auxiliary power unit on a series hybrid electric vehicle. A vehicle model is developed and an optimization method is proposed to optimize the powertrain operation. It consists of using the dynamic programing as an energy management strategy in order to minimize the fuel consumption and the number of switching On/Off of the power unit. Fuel consumption simulations are performed on the worldwide-harmonized light vehicles test cycle while considering the electric and the thermal comfort vehicle energetic needs. Then, a gas turbine dynamic model is developed, where turbomachinery and heat exchanger components are modeled by taking into account their dynamic inertias. The efficiency, the power, and the fuel consumption are calculated during transient operations. Based on the optimization results of switching ON and OFF the system, the fuel consumption dynamic simulation results are considered instead of the dynamic programming results. A constant power start-up strategy and a constant fuel strategy were investigated. Results show an increase in fuel consumption between 2.4% and 3.8% with the first start-up scenario and between 5.7% and 6.4% with the second scenario, compared with static model.