A Study of Gas Pedal Release Support System Using Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication

Reduction of fuel consumption in vehicles is important as a measure against global warming. In this paper, the authors mention and report the reduction effect of fuel consumption of the support (gas pedal release support) which prompts a driver about slowdown timing earlier, when it is predicted beforehand that the vehicle will stop because of a traffic signal. This “Gas pedal release support (GPRS)” system using vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication prompts the driver to release the gas pedal when the system predicts a stop due to red light data from a forward stopped vehicle. However, the authors can expect that fuel consumption will worsen since they cannot predict the remaining time of the red light. The authors performed a simulation of the support effect. Additionally, they tested it on public roads and they confirmed that average fuel consumption could be reduced even if they did not use traffic signal information.