Tools for Customized Consumer Information on Vehicle Energy Consumption and Costs - A European Case Study

Abstract The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, in line with the European Strategy for Low-Emission Mobility, has launched in 2016 the Green Driving Tool, an interactive web-based tool aiming at estimating fuel costs and CO2 emissions of individual car journeys. In parallel, it has developed U-SAVE, a routing system for fuel-efficient trip planning aiming at fuel consumption minimization and vehicle specific calibration. This paper provides a first assessment of the performance of the two tools in predicting fuel consumption and CO2 emissions over real-world trips. The analysis focused on the accuracy and uncertainty of the two tools when varying the detail of vehicle input data and of the velocity profile used in the calculation. These elements are particularly important in case of future integration of the tools with traffic simulation models where the level of detail regarding the vehicle input or the speed profile may vary. Results show that U-SAVE prediction is positively affected by the detail of vehicle specifications, while is not significantly sensitive to the detail of the velocity profile. Contrary, Green Driving didn’t show any remarkable change when varying both parameters. Overall, U-SAVE demonstrates a good performance in predicting CO2 emissions over on-road tests reaching an average prediction accuracy over an entire test trip of -4.6% and a standard deviation of 5.2%, while Green Driving exhibit higher uncertainty (on average 12%) but lower bias which ranged in the order of 0 to +3% depending on the vehicle and the test trip considered.