Development of a typical driving cycle for an intra-city hybrid electric bus with a fixed route

Intra-city buses have become an effective way to alleviate urban traffic congestion. Developing the driving cycle for an intra-city hybrid electric bus is of great importance for energy economy and emissions performances tests, as well as control strategy optimization to enhance fuel economy and reduce emissions. In the construction of the bus driving cycle using the adapted regular method based on kinematic segments with fixed time-steps, the transition of partial kinematic segments leads to velocity fluctuation, which does not reflect the actual driving characteristics. This study initially collects driving data from a hybrid electric bus in Shanghai, and constructs its typical driving cycle by the k-means clustering method. Considering the characteristics of frequent stopping and repetition during the bus driving cycle, the bus-station-based driving cycle segment division method and the whole-trip-based bus driving cycle construction method are proposed. A typical hybrid electric bus driving cycle is then constructed using the proposed methods. Finally, the typical hybrid electric bus driving cycles developed by two methods are compared and analyzed. The 2-norm value of the characteristic parameter error vector is decreased from 0.249 for the typical hybrid electric bus driving cycle based on the adapted regular method to 0.163 for the improved method. It is shown that the whole-trip-based bus driving cycle construction method reflects the actual driving characteristics better, has lighter computation burden, and lays the foundation for the development of an adaptive control strategy for the hybrid electric bus as well as tests of its energy economy and emissions.