Velocity Optimization of Pure Electric Vehicles with Traffic Dynamics Consideration

As Electric Vehicles (EVs) become increasingly popular, their battery-related problems (e.g., short driving range and heavy battery weight) must be resolved as soon as possible. Velocity optimization of EVs to minimize energy consumption in driving is an effective alternative to handle these problems. However, previous velocity optimization methods assume that vehicles will pass through traffic lights immediately at green traffic signals. Actually, a vehicle may still experience a delay to pass a green traffic light due to a vehicle waiting queue in front of the traffic light. In this paper, for the first time, we propose a velocity optimization system which enables EVs to immediately pass green traffic lights without delay. We collected real driving data on a 4.0 km long road section of US-25 highway to conduct extensive trace-driven simulation studies. The experimental results from Matlab and Simulation for Urban MObility (SUMO) traffic simulator show that our velocity optimization system reduces energy consumption by up to 17.5% compared with real driving patterns without increasing trip time.