Sustainability

Today a rich amount of information about location, grade, and traffic speed
can be made available to a vehicle. It is proposed to use this information to design a smart
engine control strategy using predictive control that will trade off fuel economy versus
trip duration, with only minor hardware modifications. 
 
The predicted vehicle state and traffic information are used to determine a velocity
envelope that a vehicle may take over a given path. A predictive control strategy
optimizes the engine torque to trade off fuel consumption and trip time while keeping the
vehicle within a time-varying vehicle speed envelope. This paper presents the control
design approach and preliminary simulation results. The vehicle parameters used in
simulation have been provided by Audi, a premium brand of Volkswagen Group.

Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. Electronics Research Laboratory

University of California at Berkeley 

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

This paper will present the implementation strategy for Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) in Stockholm, and especially our goals and methods for combining ISA with functions for fuel saving and less emissions. As a basis for further ISA implementation, the City of Stockholm has tested active ISA in 20 vehicles. Speeding was reduced with 30% and the acceptance was good. After the trials, the City Council of Stockholm has decided that the goal is to have ISA in all vehicles driving for the City of Stockholm before 2010. An implementation strategy has been accepted which includes an ambition to exploit the possibilities of saving fuel and environment with ISA and also to use this as an argument for implementing ISA. A new concept for how to combine ISA with support for economical driving will be developed and tested in Stockholm. This concept is based on saving fuel by reducing speeding and improving economical driving. Speeding is reduced by the ISA-component and more economical driving will be achieved by combining support before driving (education, incentives), with support during driving (from vehicle computer) and support after driving (statistics, feed-back). “Ecodriving” is not a new concept - the new part is that we can use the ISA-equipment and the ISA-organisation also for ecodriving. This will make it easier and cheaper to implement both ISA and economical driving. The goal is to save at least 10 percent fuel and the corresponding amount of CO2.

City of Stockholm

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

Traditionally the speed limit in urban areas has been 50 km/h, but recently in many cities and
towns it has been reduced even down to 30 km/h. This has been motivated especially by the
traffic safety, but sometimes we have also heard claims that it would reduce fuel consumption
and pollutant emissions, too. Driving slowly in a steady state means driving at low gears, and 
then the engine does not operate efficiently. On the other hand driving in urban conditions is
not only driving in a steady state, but the transient state dominates remarkably. Especially the
acceleration phase is fatal from the viewpoint of emissions and fuel consumption, and the
lower the speed limit is the less is the share of the acceleration phase in the vehicle motion.  

FinnRA

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

Reducing the fuel consumption of vehicles is one of the most important issues today. Recently,
intelligent transport systems (ITS) technologies have been used to develop ways to reduce fuel consumption by avoid traffic congestion. In this paper, we propose an ecological route search that generates routes requiring the least amount of fuel by considering many factors such as traffic information, geographic information, and vehicle parameters. We report here on our fuel consumption prediction model and the results of comparative driving experiments using our ecological route search and conventional time priority route search methods. 

Hitachi Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd.

Xanavi Informatics Corporation

NISSAN MOTOR CO., LTD.

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York

Ecology and sustainability are key political issues in France today. In the transport sector, these concerns are reflected in the use of the term “sustainable mobility” which describes the drive to strike a new balance between the use of personal vehicles on the one hand, and public transport and soft transport options on the other.

Use of personal vehicles can only be reduced by making public transport more attractive and ercoming negative perceptions about journey times and changes from one mode of
transport to another, seen as troublesome and a waste of time. One of the priority is to mprove the quality of journeys with information and better communications – which help save ime – plus access to consumer and public services along the way.

INRETS (French National Research Institute for Transport and Safety)

Presented at the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems, November 16-20, 2008, New York, New York