Environmental effects of driving style: impact on fuel consumption

Abstract

From an environmental point of view, the fuel consumption of vehicles with combustion engines is directly related to the depletion of non-renewable crude oil resources and pollutant emission. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of driving style on fuel consumption of light-duty vehicles. The study considered five metrics used for quantitative description of driving style: Dynamic Performance Index (DPI), Aggressiveness Factor (AF), Vehicle Aggressivity (VA), Total Aggressivity (TA), based upon the previous works of other researchers, and a newly proposed metric named Driving Style Indicator (DSI). All metrics were applied to the results of chassis dynamometer tests of two light-duty vehicles with spark-ignition and compression-ignition combustion engines. The values of metrics were plotted against corresponding values of fuel consumption to create dependences. Their analysis revealed that AF metric has strong correlation with fuel consumption, but is mathematically complex and requires numerous input data. DSI metric has simple mathematical form and is based only on the speed profile of the vehicle, and yet is characterized by a strong correlation with fuel consumption. DSI metric was further employed to investigate the influence of driving style on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the Well-to-Wheel (WtW) perspective.