Evaluating the energy consumption of electric vehicles based on car-following model under non-lane discipline

The efficiency of energy consumption of a battery-powered electric vehicle (EV) is an important issue. This paper provides a comprehensive study on the effects of lateral gaps under non-lane discipline on the energy consumption for EV traffic stream by analyzing driving cycles produced by car-following models. In particular, the energy consumption model includes travel resistance power loss, motor power loss, regenerative braking power, and ancillary power loss. Then, three car-following models are implemented to evaluate the effects of lateral gaps: the FVD model with no lateral gap, the NLBCF model with one-sided lateral gap, and the TSFVD model with two-sided lateral gaps. Numerical experiments analyze three scenarios: start process, stop process, and evolution process for FVD model, NLBCF model, and TSFVD model, respectively. Simulation results demonstrate that, although EVs under the non-lane discipline recuperate more energy during the deceleration phase, they overall consume more energy than under lane-based discipline. This study highlights that the characteristic in terms of lateral distribution of traffic flow may lead to different energy consumption in EV traffic stream. This study also provides policy insights that regularizing lane discipline contributes to the improvement in energy efficiency.