A Field Test of a Dynamic Green Driving Strategy Based on Inter-Vehicle Communications

This paper presents a field test of a dynamic green driving strategy based on inter-vehicle communication (IVC) system to evaluate its environmental benefits in stop-and-go traffic. The authors apply a smartphone based IVC (SPIVC) system to establish communication among vehicles and develop a green driving application. The application will calculate advisory speed limits from information collected by smartphones to smooth green driving vehicles’ trajectories and reduce air pollutant emissions and fuel consumption. The field test is implemented on an uninterrupted road to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy. The results indicate that the green driving strategy can substantially reduce emissions and fuel consumption in stop-and-go traffic: CO2 and fuel consumption can be saved up to 30%, and HC, CO and NOx can be reduced up to 40%. Moreover, the results show that drivers informed with vehicular information through IVC systems can smooth their trajectories more effectively than non-informed drivers. In the future, the authors will carry out more field tests under more realistic and general traffic conditions.