Benchmarking the driver acceleration impact on vehicle energy consumption and CO(2) emissions()

The study proposes a methodology for quantifying the impact of real-world heterogeneous driving behavior on vehicle energy consumption, linking instantaneous acceleration heterogeneity and CO(2) emissions. Data recorded from 20 different drivers under real driving are benchmarked against the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Cycle (WLTC), first by correlating the speed cycle with individual driver behavior and then by quantifying the CO(2) emissions and consumption. The vehicle-Independent Driving Style metric (IDS) is used to quantify acceleration dynamicity, introducing driving style stochasticity by means of probability distribution functions. Results show that the WLTC cycle assumes a relatively smooth acceleration style compared to the observed ones. The method successfully associates acceleration dynamicity to CO(2) emissions. We observe a 5% difference in the CO(2) emissions between the most favourable and the least favourable case. The intra-driver variance reached 3%, while the inter-driver variance is below 2%. The approach can be used for quantifying the driving style induced emissions divergence.