Autonomous Driving May Help Save Fuel

Adding autonomous driving and vehicle-to-vehicle communication capability is expected to make driving safer and shorten commuting times.

But now the University of Michigan and the Argonne National Laboratories outside of Chicago and Idaho National Laboratory are teaming up to see if the V2V technology also can help motorists save fuel.

Reuben Sarkar, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) deputy assistant secretary for transportation, announced the department will finance the research through a $2.7 million grant that he described as an “incubator award” to help DOE learn more about connected and automated vehicles, which are a growing focus for the agency.

University of Michigan’s team of researchers is drawn from the U-M Mobility Transformation Center, U-M Transportation Research Institute and College of Engineering. “Nobody knows the magnitude of what the energy savings of connected and automated vehicles will be,” said MTC Director Peter Sweatman. “We’re going to actively collect the data to do that.”

U-M will recruit 500 volunteers in the Ann Arbor area to participate in the project. Their personal vehicles will be equipped to collect energy consumption data, in addition to information about vehicle motion, such as speed and location, as the volunteers go about their daily routines. Some of the vehicles could belong to fleet or commercial users.

The project also plans to study how drivers react to various functions in connected and automated vehicles, and whether any resulting change in behavior affects energy consumption.

“Reducing emissions and saving fuel are expected to be significant benefits once connected and automated vehicles are on the road in large numbers,” said Huei Peng, MTC associate director and a principal investigator on the DOE project.

The majority of vehicles in the study will be hybrid-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles and battery electric vehicles, with only a small number expected to be traditional cars or trucks. Peng said there is a clear relationship between vehicle motion and energy consumption in conventional vehicles, but that relationship can vary widely in hybrid-electric and plug-in vehicles.

Argonne will contribute modeling and simulation expertise in transportation system and vehicle energy consumption, as well as development of a display module to better understand drivers’ behaviors.

By combining the vehicle motion and energy consumption data generated by U-M’s 500-vehicle fleet with Argonne’s modeling and simulation capabilities, new insights will be generated into the energy impact of connected vehicles that can communicate with the world around them.

Read more of the original article in Detroit Bureau.

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