HighlightsThis study reveals real-world driving practices of alternative fuel vehicles.Real-world driving practices can hardly be represented by existing driving cycles.Micro-trip patterns are identified through clustering and principle component analysis.This study customizes driving cycles for individual users of alternative fuel vehicle.Customized driving cycles imply more convincing fuel economy predictions.
AbstractWider deployment of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) can help with increasing energy security and transitioning to clean vehicles. Ideally, adopters of AFVs are able to maintain the same level of mobility as users of conventional vehicles while reducing energy use and emissions. Greater knowledge of AFV benefits can support consumers’ vehicle purchase and use choices. The Environmental Protection Agency’s fuel economy ratings are a key source of potential benefits of using AFVs. However, the ratings are based on pre-designed and fixed driving cycles applied in laboratory conditions, neglecting the attributes of drivers and vehicle types. While the EPA ratings using pre-designed and fixed driving cycles may be unbiased they are not necessarily precise, owning to large variations in real-life driving. Thus, to better predict fuel economy for individual consumers targeting specific types of vehicles, it is important to find driving cycles that can better represent consumers’ real-world driving practices instead of using pre-designed standard driving cycles. This paper presents a methodology for customizing driving cycles to provide convincing fuel economy predictions that are based on drivers’ characteristics and contemporary real-world driving, along with validation efforts. The methodology takes into account current micro-driving practices in terms of maintaining speed, acceleration, braking, idling, etc., on trips. Specifically, using a large-scale driving data collected by in-vehicle Global Positioning System as part of a travel survey, a micro-trips (building block) library for California drivers is created using 54million seconds of vehicle trajectories on more than 60,000 trips, made by 3000 drivers. To generate customized driving cycles, a new tool, known as Case Based System for Driving Cycle Design, is developed. These customized cycles can predict fuel economy more precisely for conventional vehicles vis-à-vis AFVs. This is based on a consumer’s similarity in terms of their own and geographical characteristics, with a sample of micro-trips from the case library. The AFV driving cycles, created from real-world driving data, show significant differences from conventional driving cycles currently in use. This further highlights the need to enhance current fuel economy estimations by using customized driving cycles, helping consumers make more informed vehicle purchase and use decisions.
Customizing driving cycles to support vehicle purchase and use decisions: Fuel economy estimation for alternative fuel vehicle users
Tramsportation Research, Part C: Emerging Technologies ; 67 ; 280-298
2016-02-23
19 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Emissions, fuel economy and energy consumption of a flex fuel vehicle in different driving cycles
SAE Technical Papers | 2018
|Optimal driving for single-vehicle fuel economy
Elsevier | 1987
|Vehicle Fuel Economy-The CleanFleet Alternative Fuels Project
SAE Technical Papers | 1995
|Trends in alternative measures of vehicle fuel economy
Automotive engineering | 1986
|