Platoons of connected vehicles can double throughput in urban roads

Intersections are the bottlenecks of the urban road system because an intersection’s capacity is only a fraction of the maximum flows that the roads connecting to the intersection can carry. This capacity can be increased if vehicles cross the intersections in platoons rather than one by one as they do today. Platoon formation is enabled by connected vehicle technology. This paper assesses the potential mobility benefits of platooning. It argues that saturation flow rates, and hence intersection capacity, can be doubled or tripled by platooning. The argument is supported by the analysis of three queuing models and by the simulation of a road network with 16 intersections and 73 links. The queuing analysis and the simulations reveal that a signalized network with fixed time control will support an increase in demand by a factor of (say) two or three if all saturation flows are increased by the same factor, with no change in the control. Furthermore, despite the increased demand vehicles will experience the same delay and travel time. The same scaling improvement is achieved when the fixed time control is replaced by the max pressure adaptive control. Part of the capacity increase can alternatively be used to reduce queue lengths and the associated queuing delay by decreasing the cycle time. Impediments to the control of connected vehicles to achieve platooning at intersections appear to be small.     

Preparing a nation for autonomous vehicles: opportunities,barriers and policy recommendations

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) represent a potentially disruptive yet beneficial change to our transportation system. This new technology has the potential to impact vehicle safety, congestion, and travel behavior. All told, major social AV impacts in the form of crash savings, travel time reduction, fuel efficiency and parking benefits are estimated to approach $2000 to per year per AV, and may eventually approach nearly $4000 when comprehensive crash costs are accounted for. Yet barriers to implementation and mass-market penetration remain. Initial costs will likely be unaffordable. Licensing and testing standards in the U.S. are being developed at the state level, rather than nationally, which may lead to inconsistencies across states. Liability details remain undefined, security concerns linger, and without new privacy standards, a default lack of privacy for personal travel may become the norm. The impacts and interactions with other components of the transportation system, as well as implementation details, remain uncertain. To address these concerns, the federal government should expand research in these areas and create a nationally recognized licensing framework for AVs, determining appropriate standards for liability, security, and data privacy.     

Fuel price elasticities for single-unit truck operations in the United States

This paper provides fuel price elasticity estimates for single-unit truck activity, where single-unit trucks are defined as vehicles on a single frame with either (1) at least two axles and six tires; or (2) a gross vehicle weight greater than 10,000 lb. Using data from 1980 to 2012, this paper applies first-difference and error correction models and finds that single-unit truck activity is sensitive to certain macroeconomic and infrastructure factors (gross domestic product, lane miles expansion, and housing construction), but is not sensitive to diesel fuel prices. These results suggest that fuel price elasticities of single unit truck activity are inelastic. These results may be used by policymakers in considering policies that have a direct impact on fuel prices, or policies whose effects may be equivalent to fuel price adjustments.     

How driver behaviour and parking alignment affects inductive charging systems for electric vehicles

Inductive charging, a form of wireless charging, uses an electromagnetic field to transfer energy between two objects. This emerging technology offers an alternative solution to users having to physically plug in their electric vehicle (EV) to charge. Whilst manufacturers claim inductive charging technology is market ready, the efficiency of transfer of electrical energy is highly reliant on the accurate alignment of the coils involved. Therefore understanding the issue of parking misalignment and driver behaviour is an important human factors question, and the focus of this paper. Two studies were conducted, one a retrospective analysis of 100 pre-parked vehicles, the second a dynamic study where 10 participants parked an EV aiming to align with a charging pad with no bay markings as guidance. Results from both studies suggest that drivers are more accurate at parking laterally than in the longitudinal direction, with a mean lateral distance from the centre of the bay being 12.12 and 9.57 cm (retrospective and dynamic studies respectively) compared to longitudinally 23.73 and 73.48 cm. With current inductive charging systems having typical tolerances of approximately ±10 cm from their centre point, this study has shown that only 5% of vehicles in both studies would be aligned sufficiently accurately to allow efficient transfer of electrical energy through induction.     

车载终端T-BOX技术分析及发展趋势研究

随着汽车产业智能化、网联化进程的不断发展,车载终端T-BOX作为汽车网联化关键零部件,其重要性日益凸显。通过对T-BOX的系统架构梳理、T-BOX主要功能的分析,展现了T-BOX当前技术现状,并结合车路协同技术路线,对T-BOX技术发展趋势进行研究。     

Consumer preferences for electric vehicles in lower tier cities of China: Evidences from south Jiangsu region

China is the world biggest market of electric vehicles (EVs) in terms of production and sales. Existing studies on consumer preferences for EVs in China have generally focused on first-tier cities, while little attention has been paid to the lower tier cities. This exploratory study investigates consumer preferences for EVs in lower tier cities of China, by collecting stated preference (SP) data in two second-tier cities and three third-tier cities in the south Jiangsu region of China. The discrete choice modeling analysis shows that Chinese consumers in lower-tier cities are generally sensitive to monetary attributes, charging service and driving range of EVs. They also perceive Chinese vehicle brands to be disadvantaged compared with European brands. When comparing the differences in second-tier versus third-tier cities, we find that consumers in third-tier cities are more sensitive to purchase price, subsidy of purchase, and coverage of charging stations than their second-tier counterparts. This study also highlights the role of different psychological effects, such as symbols of car ownership, normative-face influence, and risk aversion, in shaping consumer preferences for EVs in lower-tier cities of China. Our results provide important implications for contextualizing government policies and marketing strategies in line with the different sizes and characteristics of the cities in China.     

Dynamic traffic assignment of cooperative adaptive cruise control

Advances in connected and automated vehicle technologies have resulted in new vehicle applications, such as cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC). Microsimulation models have shown significant increases in capacity and stability due to CACC, but most previous work has relied on microsimulation. To study the effects of CACC on larger networks and with user equilibrium route choice, we incorporate CACC into the link transmission model (LTM) for dynamic network loading. First, we derive the flow-density relationship from the MIXIC car-following model of CACC (at 100% CACC market penetration). The flow-density relationship has an unusual shape; part of the congested regime has an infinite congested wave speed. However, we verify that the flow predictions match observations from MIXIC modeled in VISSIM. Then, we use the flow-density relationship from MIXIC in LTM. Although the independence of separate links restricts the maximum congested wave speed, for common freeway link lengths the congested wave speed is sufficiently high to fit the observed flows from MIXIC. Results on a freeway and regional networks (with CACC-exclusive lanes) indicate that CACC could reduce freeway congestion, but naïve deployment of CACC-exclusive lanes could cause an increase in total system travel time.     

A discounted recursive logit model for dynamic gridlock network analysis

Emerging sensing technologies such as probe vehicles equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) devices on board provide us real-time vehicle trajectories. They are helpful for the understanding of the cases that are significant but difficult to observe because of the infrequency, such as gridlock networks. On the premise of this type of emerging technology, this paper propose a sequential route choice model that describes route choice behavior, both in ordinary networks, where drivers acquire spatial knowledge of networks through their experiences, and in extraordinary networks, which are situations that drivers rarely experience, and applicable to real-time traffic simulations. In extraordinary networks, drivers do not have any experience or appropriate information. In such a context, drivers have little spatial knowledge of networks and choose routes based on dynamic decision making, which is sequential and somewhat forward-looking. In order to model these decision-making dynamics, we propose a discounted recursive logit model, which is a sequential route choice model with the discount factor of expected future utility. Through illustrative examples, we show that the discount factor reflects drivers’ decision-making dynamics, and myopic decisions can confound the network congestion level. We also estimate the parameters of the proposed model using a probe taxis’ trajectory data collected on March 4, 2011 and on March 11, 2011, when the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. The results show that the discount factor has a lower value in gridlock networks than in ordinary networks.     

新能源汽车续驶里程焦虑及维修技术研究

续驶里程焦虑是新能源汽车售后市场抱怨最多的问题。文章从售后角度分析了导致续驶里程焦虑的原因及维修排查技术,提出了一些建议性措施。旨在为售后相关人员提供一定的理论指导,从而推动售后市场更好的发展。