The impact of road grade on city-wide vehicle energy consumption and eco-routing

Due to growing concern about the impact of emissions from the transport sector on global climate change, vehicle energy consumption is a factor of great interest to network planners. In addition, drivers are interested in reducing energy consumption and thus fuel costs. However, traditional vehicle energy consumption models have neglected an important factor: road grade. This work quantifies the impact of the energy consumed due to road grades on two city networks, and results indicate that the effects of grades should not be excluded from vehicle energy consumption evaluations. Additionally, the effects of eco-routing, in which drivers choose the least-energy-consumed shortest path, are explored. Results on the city networks indicate that if drivers do not account for grades, they may choose a route that actually increases vehicle energy consumption. The modelling tool proposed in this work is scalable and easily adaptable for different cities.