Estimation of Fuel Efficiency of Road Traffic by Characterization of Vehicle-Specific Power and Speed Based on Floating Car Data

To evaluate the fuel efficiency of road traffic, an approach that captures the characteristics of road traffic on the basis of floating car data (FCD) is proposed. In existing studies of fuel consumption, parameters such as speed, acceleration, and power demand have been adopted to represent the characteristics of traffic flows and vehicle activities. However, they are not suitable for use in the evaluation of fuel efficiency in a dynamic traffic network with various advanced traffic management alternatives. On the basis of a comprehensive analysis of the data collected by portable emission measurement systems and FCD collected in Beijing, it was found that the time distribution in vehicle-specific power (VSP) bins, that is, the VSP bin distribution, can well represent fuel consumption per unit of time. Furthermore, the combination of the VSP bin distribution and the average travel speed in a network can represent fuel consumption per unit of distance. According to these findings, the paper develops a method for evaluating the fuel efficiency for road traffic on the basis of defined indicators of fuel consumption and fuel consumption at the most efficient speed. A comparison of the estimated indicators and the real values indicates that the proposed approach performs well in evaluating the fuel efficiency of road traffic. This approach was applied to develop the temporal distribution of fuel efficiency for the West 2nd Ring Road in Beijing. Finally, the paper provides recommendations for expansion of this study by including more vehicle types and different rates of penetration of FCD.