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To improve the thermoelectric generator (TEG) power conversion efficiency when recovering automobile exhaust waste heat, it is important to design an optimal structure and circuit layouts on TEG responding to actual changed exhaust parameters. However, full-series-current thermoelectric models were commonly used without considering on other circuit layouts in previous studies. In order to explore the effect of circuit layout on thermoelectric generator’s performance, this research introduced two kinds of thermoelectric models with full series-current mode and multi-series current mode taken. By taking finite element analysis, it is mainly focused on revealing the TEG power output performance and the optimal structure scales under different circuit layouts. Besides, the effect of exhaust thermal parameters were considered in the optimization process. Finally, by comparing the effects of structure scales, circuit layout mode, exhaust temperature, and mass flow rate on the net power, the maximal power conversion was achievable which was helpful to complete a more comprehensively optimal design on thermoelectric generator. It is found that when the multi-series current stage increases from 2 to 5, the net power can obviously increase from 13% to 27% compared to a full-series current layout. As the number of stage increases, the power increase becomes less and less obvious. Whatever the exhaust parameters, the same optimal height scale and optimal width scale of the series current mode can be used in the multi-series current mode. The optimal length of a multi-stage should be designed according to exhaust parameters. It is strongly recommended to use multi-stage series current mode for its obvious improvement on power for large-scale TEG systems.