High-Resolution Fuel Consumption Model for Better Characterizations of High-Speed Scenarios

A detailed and accurate fuel model fuel consumption model that reflects real-world fuel consumption is required as input for devising and executing a model policy for prospective regulatory tools. The fuel consumption model based on the vehicle-specific power (VSP) has rapidly become the primary development direction since the release of the Motor Vehicle Emissions Simulator (MOVES) model. However, fuel consumption cannot be accurately characterized under high-speed scenarios. This work develops two fuel consumption models for the light-duty (gasoline) vehicles that can better characterize fuel consumption for light-duty vehicles under high-speed scenarios. For model 1, the VSP of −5kW/ton is a crucial turning point. When VSP∈ [−30, −5] kW/ton, the fuel rate is only determined by speed. When VSP∈(−5, 30], the fuel rate will gradually increase with VSP, and the growth characteristics will vary with speed. Model 2 develops the new interpretations for VSP and forms the one-to-one correspondence between the fuel rate and the new VSP. The two models can separately improve the accuracy by 12.2% and 13.8% compared with the conventional model. The fuel factor differences become significant when speed is higher than 65 km/h, which are separately 30.66% and 28.13% higher than the conventional VSP model when the speed is 100 km/h. Further, the fuel factors of the two models for freeways are, respectively, 6.33% and 7.56% higher than the conventional VSP model, and the distinction for arterial, collector, and local street roads is not notable.