Vehicle fleet energy efficiency: Influence on overall vehicle effectiveness

Abstract

This paper presents the research on vehicle fleet energy efficiency impact upon overall vehicle effectiveness. Transport companies and companies with own vehicle fleets tend to enhance their resource effectiveness, and to increase their transport service quality with the objective of attaining a competitive position on the market. Since energy consumed for transport operations is an important transport process resource, a method for assessing transport process effectiveness has been developed with the objective of increasing vehicle fleet effectiveness and its energy efficiency, and the overall vehicle effectiveness human indicator has been defined accordingly. The developed method was then implemented in an actual vehicle fleet and variations of the overall vehicle effectiveness human indicator were researched, as well as specific energy consumptions for respective net transport volumes depending on the following indicators: vehicle payload capacity utilization rate and mileage utilization rate. It is shown that specific energy consumption influences overall vehicle effectiveness depending on both the payload capacity utilization rate and mileage utilization rate.