Transport energy consumption in mountainous roads. A comparative case study for internal combustion engines and electric vehicles in Andorra

Abstract

This paper analyses transport energy consumption of conventional and electric vehicles in mountainous roads. A standard round trip in Andorra has been modelled in order to characterise vehicle dynamics in hilly regions. Two conventional diesel vehicles and their electric-equivalent models have been simulated and their performances have been compared. Six scenarios have been simulated to study the effects of factors such as orography, traffic congestion and driving style. The European fuel consumption and emissions test and Artemis urban driving cycles, representative of European driving cycles, have also been included in the comparative analysis. The results show that road grade has a major impact on fuel economy, although it affects consumption in different levels depending on the technology analysed. Electric vehicles are less affected by this factor as opposed to conventional vehicles, increasing the potential energy savings in a hypothetical electrification of the car fleet. However, electric vehicle range in mountainous terrains is lower compared to that estimated by manufacturers, a fact that could adversely affect a massive adoption of electric cars in the short term.

Improving Electricity Consumption Estimation for Electric Vehicles Based on Sparse GPS Observations

“…The energy consumption model for an internal combustion engine vehicle is formulated in terms of the work of the tractive force necessary to overcome acceleration resistance, air resistance, gradient resistance, and rolling resistance and is also used for EVs [15,40] and given by:…”

“…η 1 and η 2 are the two parameters of this function, which are estimated in the regression model. The aerodynamic friction loss [15,40] is given by:…”

“…In fact, Eae i is proportional to V 2 i when l i = 1 km. Regarding the energy consumed for hill climbing, previous studies [15,40] formulate it as:…”

“…According to previous studies, a variety of factors affect energy consumption, including travel-related factors [4,5], environment-related factors [6][7][8][9], vehicle-related factors [10][11][12][13][14], roadway-related factors [15], traffic-related factors [16][17][18], driver-related factors [3,[19][20][21][22], the health and degradation condition of the battery [23][24][25][26], the efficiency of braking energy recovery [27][28][29][30][31], and the charge and discharge character of the battery [32]. Some previous studies collected the information through driving-cycle experiments in the lab [4,24] and Global Positioning System (GPS) observations in the real world [32][33][34], but some results showed the significant difference between experiments and real-world conditions [35,36], leading to a relative low accuracy and poor practicality of models.…”

Transport energy demand in Andorra. Assessing private car futures through sensitivity and scenario analysis

“…In addition, in the particular case of Andorra, the high grades of its roads have a major impact on energy consumption. In analysing the gap between fuel economy under the NEDC and under real driving conditions in Andorra, a gap of 39.6% between NEDC consumption and real-road figures (Travesset-Baro et al, 2015) has been shown. In this paper, this value is assumed as an on-road factor, which is applied to all car categories.…”