Design and Implementation of a CANBus-Based Eco-Driving System for Public Transport Bus Services

Driving vehicles according to eco-driving principles and techniques have significant impact on decreasing both fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. In addition to some kind of technical and/or mechanical features brought by today’s new generation vehicles, driver behavior is also one of the greatest factors affecting the fuel consumption. Many studies show that the effect of eco-driving education on the drivers loses its impact in long term and there needs some sort of continuous monitoring and/or feedback mechanisms. This kind of driver monitoring becomes very critical especially in fleets composed of heavy-duty vehicles, such as municipality buses, truck fleets, etc. Moreover, in order to adapt behavior to drive more economically, information about instant fuel consumption has to be provided to the driver. Hence, in this paper, we introduce an eco-driving system in which data gathered from the controller area network (CANBus) of public transport vehicles are processed for both comparative and fair evaluation of bus drivers’ eco-driving performance. Moreover, in-vehicle components of the system guide the drivers during their trips; provide feedbacks and real-time warnings considering the fuel consumption. Developed system was successfully deployed and evaluated in one of the public metrobus systems used by approximately 250000 passengers every day. Based on the 15-months evaluation period, the results are very promising in the sense that both drivers and operators found the system useful and the system provided fuel saving up to approximately 5% even in the short term of monthly comparisons.