Developing a General Methodology for Driving Cycle Construction: Comparison of Various Established Driving Cycles in the World to Propose a General Approach

Many models have been developed in the world to estimate emission inventories and fuel consumption in the past and those models can be broadly categorized as either a travel based model or a fuel based model. Driving cycles can be considered as one of the major travel based models to estimate emission inventories. It can be used for various purposes such as setting up the emission standards, for traffic management purposes and also to determine the travel time. In the past, researchers have tried to use readily available, well established driving cycles in their environment which is different from the origin of the driving cycle in many aspects. Thus, the attempts have failed to give good quality results. This study attempts to critically evaluate the different methods used for driving cycle construction in different parts of the world under various conditions to propose a general suitable approach to develop a representative and economical driving cycle(s) for a given geographic location for set objectives.