U-M’s team of researchers is drawn from the U-M Mobility Transformation Center, U-M Transportation Research Institute and College of Engineering.

Nobody knows the magnitude of what the energy savings of connected and automated vehicles will be. We’re going to actively collect the data to do that.

—MTC Director Peter Sweatman

U-M will recruit 500 volunteers in the Ann Arbor area to participate in the project. Their personal vehicles will be equipped to collect energy consumption data, in addition to information about vehicle motion, such as speed and location, as the volunteers go about their daily routines. Some of the vehicles could belong to fleet or commercial users.

The project also will study how drivers react to various functions in connected and automated vehicles, and whether any resulting change in behavior affects energy consumption.

Reducing emissions and saving fuel are expected to be significant benefits once connected and automated vehicles are on the road in large numbers. Unlike the safety impact of these vehicles, however, energy consumption has not been widely studied. This research will help us better understand the potential energy savings and identify possible obstacles to achieving meaningful reductions.

—Huei Peng, MTC associate director and a principal investigator on the DOE project

The majority of vehicles in the study will be hybrid-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles and battery electric vehicles, with only a small number expected to be traditional cars or trucks. Peng said there is a clear relationship between vehicle motion and energy consumption in conventional vehicles, but that relationship can vary widely in hybrid-electric and plug-in vehicles.

Argonne will contribute modeling and simulation expertise in transportation system and vehicle energy consumption, as well as development of a display module to better understand drivers’ behaviors. Argonne’s Autonomie vehicle system modeling tool is widely used by manufacturers and researchers to virtually investigate the impact of various technologies on efficiency. The project also will use Argonne’s POLARIS system, an open-source high-speed computing framework for traffic flow and transportation system modeling.

By combining the vehicle motion and energy consumption data generated by U-M’s 500-vehicle fleet with Argonne’s modeling and simulation capabilities, new insights will be generated into the energy impact of connected vehicles that can communicate with the world around them.

Idaho National Laboratory will consult on the project to provide guidance about data collection and analysis. The laboratory recently led a nationwide study to analyze energy usage and driver charging behavior for approximately 8,300 plug-in electric vehicles and 125 million driving miles.