Relative Fuel Economy Potential of Intelligent, Hybrid and Intelligent–Hybrid Passenger Vehicles 65

devices, inter-vehicle communication systems, GPS and infrastructure–vehicle commu-

nication pathways) are discussed by several authors, for example [11].
To simulate fuel use of vehicles over the drive cycles, software packages such as
ADVISOR [12] or PSAT [13] may be used. The ADVISOR software package provides
a deterministic simulation environment based on quasi-static maps to represent functions
such as fuel use in terms of engine speed and manifold pressure. While all dynamics are
ignored using this approach, it does allow for hybrid and conventional powertrain
vehicles to be simulated in one software package and has been found to give reasonably
accurate fuel economy results over a specified drive cycle. Consequently, it has been
used as the software tool in the work described here. The vehicle models used are
specified in the following section.

2. VEHICLE MODELS FOR SIMULATION STUDIES

The choice of vehicle to be used as a benchmark is reasonably arbitrary, as the
initial comparison here is not the absolute fuel consumption levels, but the fuel economy
percentage gains possible following incorporation of telematics.
The vehicle treated as the benchmark is a 4.0 l, six-cylinder sedan, representative of
the most common vehicle size sold in the Australian market over the decade from 1995
to 2005. This vehicle was chosen as access to much of the data (including static maps of
fuel use as a function of operating condition) required to develop the quasi-static
simulation model which is described in [14] or was available through the ACART
collaborative research centre.

2.1 Conventional powertrain vehicle model

The key parameters of the benchmark vehicle model corresponding to the 2002 produc-
tion version of the Ford Falcon are listed in Table 3.1 and are very close to the current
production model, with the exception that a six-speed gearbox is now used. The static
maps corresponding to fuel use and power as functions of engine operating point also
differ slightly from the 2009 production version resulting in approximately 5% improve-
ment in fuel economy over an urban drive cycle and 4% higher peak power following
nearly a decade of refinement. Thus, despite these slight differences between the models,
given the detail available the model serves as a reliable benchmark for a conventional
powertrain vehicle to be used in comparison with an equivalent hybrid powertrain.
A hybrid configuration of this vehicle does not currently exist, and to create a
simulation model from scratch requires some informed guesses about what such a
powertrain may look like. In the first instance, a mild hybrid is the most likely to appear
in the marketplace but will not offer the comprehensive fuel economy benefits of full
powertrain hybridisation. Both levels of hybrid vehicle model are described in the
following two sections.