Development of a driving cycle for the measurement of fuel consumption and exhaust emissions of automobiles in Bangkok during peak periods

The exhaust emissions and fuel consumption rates of newly registered automobiles in Thailand are currently assessed using the standard driving cycle of the Economic Commission of Europe (ECE). Because of the highly different driving conditions, the assessment results may not reflect realistic amounts of emissions and fuel consumption for vehicles in Bangkok traffic, which is well known for its congestion. The objective of this study is therefore to develop a new driving cycle for vehicles traveling on Bangkok’s main roads during peak traffic hours. This paper first presents the development of a method for selecting representative road routes with traffic conditions that are representative of traffic in Bangkok for conducting real-world driving speed data collection. These real-world data are obtained by driving a car equipped with a speed-time data logger along those selected road routes. Several driving characteristics, including various profiles of microtrips, are analyzed from the collected speed-time data, and a number of target driving parameters are then defined for use as a set of criteria to justify the best driving cycle. A procedure for generating driving cycles from the analyzed real-driving data is also developed, and the method to select the cycle that is most representative of Bangkok traffic is described. Comparisons found in the study show that the target driving parameters of the newly developed driving cycle are much closer to those obtained from the real-world measured data than those calculated from the presently used European drive cycle. This would imply that the obtained driving cycle will produce more realistic results of the emissions and fuel consumption assessment tests for vehicles traveling in Bangkok. The methods developed in this study for route selection and driving cycle construction can easily be adopted by other big cities to develop their own vehicle driving cycles. Furthermore, although the developed methods are for passenger cars, similar approaches can be applied to develop driving cycles for other types of vehicle, such as city buses and pick-up trucks.