Estimating Bounds of Aerodynamic, Mass, and Auxiliary Load Impacts on Autonomous Vehicles: A Powertrain Simulation Approach
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: J.C. Hernandez
Sustainability 2021, 13(22), 12405; https://doi.org/10.3390/su132212405
Received: 1 October 2021
/
Revised: 5 November 2021
/
Accepted: 8 November 2021
/
Published: 10 November 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Implications of Emerging Transportation Technologies)
Vehicle automation requires new onboard sensors, communication equipment, and/or data processing units, and may encourage modifications to existing onboard components (such as the steering wheel). These changes impact the vehicle’s mass, auxiliary load, coefficient of drag, and frontal area, which then change vehicle performance. This paper uses the powertrain simulation model FASTSim to quantify the impact of autonomy-related design changes on a vehicle’s fuel consumption. Levels 0, 2, and 5 autonomous vehicles are modeled for two battery-electric vehicles (2017 Chevrolet Bolt and 2017 Nissan Leaf) and a gasoline powered vehicle (2017 Toyota Corolla). Additionally, a level 5 vehicle is divided into pessimistic and optimistic scenarios which assume different electronic equipment integration format. The results show that 4–8% reductions in energy economy can be achieved in a L5 optimistic scenario and an 10–15% increase in energy economy will be the result in a L5 pessimistic scenario. When looking at impacts on different power demand sources, inertial power is the major power demand in urban driving conditions and aerodynamic power demand is the major demand in highway driving conditions.
View Full-Text
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
MDPI and ACS Style
Chen, Y.; Sun, R.; Wu, X. Estimating Bounds of Aerodynamic, Mass, and Auxiliary Load Impacts on Autonomous Vehicles: A Powertrain Simulation Approach. Sustainability 2021, 13, 12405. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132212405
AMA Style
Chen Y, Sun R, Wu X. Estimating Bounds of Aerodynamic, Mass, and Auxiliary Load Impacts on Autonomous Vehicles: A Powertrain Simulation Approach. Sustainability. 2021; 13(22):12405. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132212405
Chicago/Turabian StyleChen, Yuche, Ruixiao Sun, and Xuanke Wu. 2021. "Estimating Bounds of Aerodynamic, Mass, and Auxiliary Load Impacts on Autonomous Vehicles: A Powertrain Simulation Approach" Sustainability 13, no. 22: 12405. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132212405
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
