Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have a larger battery and can replace a certain amount of conventional fossil fuels with grid electricity, which differs from the traditional hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). The application of the onboard electrical energy significantly influences the energy utilization efficiency and thus impacts the fuel economy. In this paper, the basic PHEV operation modes are defined as pure electric driving (PED), hybrid driving charge depleting (HDCD) and hybrid driving charge sustaining (HDCS) based on the battery state of charge (SoC) profile. For a plug-in hybrid electric bus (PHEB), three different energy management strategies, which are combined with two or three of the basic operation modes, are put forward and comparatively examined based on simulation models. If some trip information can be approximately known in advance such as the trip distance and the mean power demand, the PED + HDCD + HDCS strategy comprised optimally of the PED mode, the HDCD mode and the HDCS mode would be the best energy management strategy.