Modeling the Impact of Drivers’ Behavior on Energy Efficiency of Medium Duty Electric Vehicles

Abstract

Freight electric vehicles (EVs) over 3.5 tons are of particular interest to the reduce air pollutants in the urban freight transport sector. However, one main reason why freight transport companies refrain from deploying freight EVs are their higher costs, compared to conventional vehicles. But despite their lower operational costs, the high purchase price of medium duty EVs—which are predominantly used in urban freight transport—renders them uncompetitive, compared to conventional vehicles. One possibility to raise the competitiveness of freight EVs is to increase their range by improving the drivers’ behavior. This is an important leverage, since first tests with passenger EVs indicate that the drivers’ behavior can influence the vehicles range with up to 30 %. Although sufficient literature about eco-drive strategies for conventional freight vehicles exists, these strategies cannot be directly transferred to freight EVs, due to technological differences, such as recuperation. The research of specific strategies for freight EVs has received little attention so far. Thus the objective of this research proposal is to measure, analyze and model the dependency of medium duty freight EVs energy consumption on the drivers’ behavior, by utilizing real world test data.