In order to solve the problem that the current hybrid electric vehicle energy management strategy can’t simultaneously consider the optimality and real-time, the logistics vehicle adopting the planetary hybrid electric system was taken as the research object, and an energy management optimization strategy based on the quadratic tracker theory for online real-time application was proposed. The linear mathematical model of the planetary hybrid electric system was established, and the single-degree-of-freedom optimization strategy of the direct fuel-saving quadratic tracker was developed. The offline simulation verification and simulation were carried out based on the MATLAB/Simulink software platform. The results show that the strategy achieves a fuel-saving effect similar to the global optimization algorithm. The hardware-in-the-loop test was carried out on the hardware-in-the-loop platform built on dSPACE/Simulator. The test results show that the strategy has good real-time applicability.