Intelligent cars can achieve improved fuel efficiency

A recent study published in the Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies journal compared the fuel efficiency between the standard combustion engine, hybrid and a telematics enabled car to show that adding intelligent control to a vehicle improved fuel efficiency by a large percentage. The study was conducted by researchers from the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Using telematics, i.e., traffic information collected using a sensor network, a car with a standard combustion engine and intelligent control that utilized the received information was as efficient as a hybrid car while it outperformed a standard car by as much as 20% in fuel efficiency during urban driving.

The fuel economy of the optimal hybrid is found to have an average of 20% improvement relative to the baseline vehicle across three different urban drive cycles. Feedforward information about traffic flow supplied by telematics capability is then used to develop alternative driving cycles firstly under the assumption there are no constraints on the intelligent vehicle’s path, and then taking into account in the presence of ‘un-intelligent’ vehicles on the road. It is observed that with telematic capability, the fuel economy improvements equal that achievable with a hybrid configuration with as little as 7 s traffic look-ahead capability, and can be as great as 33% improvement relative to the un-intelligent baseline drivetrain.

Such an intelligent vehicle could be cheaper to produce compared to a hybrid because some cities already collect telematic information for the intelligent control of traffic lights.

Communication between a fleet of vehicles has been utilized in Automated Highway Systems previously (e.g. PATH) in order to improve the overall behaviour of a platoon of vehicles in response to changing traffic conditions. Thus it is assumed for the intelligent vehicle in this paper that there exists a sensor network potentially incorporating inter-vehicle communication, radar and laser technologies that can be used to convey information about the surrounding traffic. This traffic preview information can then be used to adjust the vehicle’s instantaneous velocity, whilst arriving at the destination at he same time as an un-equipped vehicle.

I think that this is a very interesting idea. I would prefer an intelligent system that does not take control of the car driving process but works under the hood to make driving more efficient and safe. Most of the automated highway driving systems that are being tested assume that all cars on the road are intelligent and in control; people in this cars are just passengers and not drivers. Such a system might result in more efficient use of highway real estate and higher fuel efficiency but most people own cars because they like to drive. I believe that future cars will employ more efficient engines and intelligent control systems that will work with human drivers in an unobtrusive way mostly monitoring the driver’s attention and taking control when an important event such as a red light or jaywalking pedestrian is missed.

Article: Fuel economy improvements for urban driving: Hybrid vs. intelligent vehicles