Analysis of Vehicles’ Daily Fuel
Consumption Frontiers with Long-Term
Controller Area Network Data
Dawei Li, Tomio Miwa, and Takayuki Morikawa
The vehicle fuel consumption frontier (VFCF) is the unobserved maximum
amount of fuel that an individual private car user is willing to consume
for driving. This study incorporated interindividual and intraindividual
variations into the modeling of VFCF. Long-term controller area net-
work data collected from private cars during 10 months in Toyota City,
Japan, were used. A stochastic frontier model with random parameters
was applied as the modeling methodology to deal with the panel data.
The data fit of the estimation results demonstrated that models with
random coefficients were preferable and had better model fits than the
ordinary linear regression models. VFCFs on working days were sig-
nificantly affected by the departure time of the first trip, temperature,
weather, home location, gender, age, and occupation. All explanatory
variables, except weather and temperature, also significantly affected
VFCFs on holidays. Predictions made with the estimated parameters
showed that the expected VFCFs were about double the corresponding
actual vehicle fuel consumption expenditures.
With the increased concern about energy consumption and urban
air pollution caused by private vehicles, there is a need for models
of vehicle fuel consumption. Vehicle fuel consumption and carbon
emissions have a significant linear relationship. In previous studies,
physically and empirically based methods were usually considered
in modeling fuel consumption and emissions. It was found that
vehicle fuel consumption and emissions rates are usually associated
with cruise speeds, drivers’ acceleration aggressiveness, and road
grade (1–4). In these studies, fuel consumption was only related to
the driving environment and driving behavior; fuel consumption and
emissions were estimated for a given driving task. The next prob-
lem is, given an individual traveler, how to determine daily driving
tasks. An activity-based model can be applied to solve this problem.
Previous studies have considered the combination of an activity-
based model (5) and a fuel consumption model (6). Simulation-based
models can provide detailed analysis of fuel consumption and carbon
emissions. However, to develop an activity-based model, abundant
D. Li, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Urban Intelligent Transportation Systems,
Southeast University, Jinxianghe Road No. 35, Xuanwu District, Nanjing
210096, China. T. Miwa, EcoTopia Science Institute and Green Mobility Col-
laborative Research Center; and T. Morikawa, Graduate School of Environmental
Studies and Green Mobility Collaborative Research Center, Nagoya University,
Furo-Cho, Chikusa-Ku, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan. Corresponding author: D. Li,
godavid87@gmail.com.
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board,
No. 2503, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 2015, pp. 100–109.
DOI: 10.3141/2503-11
100
data resources are required. Therefore, it is often not feasible in
practice.
This study approached the problem from a more macroscopic
perspective. Since driving behavior and travel behavior are related
to the characteristics of drivers, road environments, and vehicles,
the study explored the relationships between these characteristics
and drivers’ daily fuel consumption directly. The data used in the
study were the long-term controller area network (CAN) data col-
lected from private vehicles in Toyota City, Japan, as well as data on
the characteristics of drivers and their cars. The main contributions
of this study are
1. A detailed analysis of the variations in drivers’ daily fuel
consumption, which used long-term panel data, and
2. A proposed stochastic frontier model to incorporate inter­
individual and intraindividual variations into the estimations of daily
fuel consumption.
The most direct way to describe the relationships between the
attribute variables and drivers’ daily fuel consumption is to develop
a linear regression model. However, the ordinary linear regression
model cannot reflect the constraint of drivers’ available resources.
This constraint means that every driver has a budget for daily fuel
consumption. The constraint is similar to the assumption of a travel
time budget, which has been well discussed in the literature (7, 8).
Mokhtarian and Chen (9) provide a comprehensive discussion. Travel
time and fuel consumption are the indexes of drivers’ general costs for
travel and are significantly correlated. Therefore, it is reasonable to
assume that a budget for daily fuel consumption exists. The analysis
presented here proves that this assumption can lead to a model with
better fit compared with the ordinary linear regression model.
To consider the travel time budget, Banerjee et al. (10) developed
the notion of a travel time frontier, which is representative of the
unobserved maximum time that an individual is prepared to spend on
traveling per day. According to this definition, even if the travel time
frontier is constant, actual travel time expenditure may vary over
time but should always be less than the travel time frontier. Simi-
larly, this study developed the notion of a fuel consumption frontier
to incorporate the constraint of drivers’ available resources for fuel
consumption. The model used by Banerjee et al. (10) is called a sto-
chastic frontier model, which was originally proposed for efficiency
and productivity analysis (11) and also widely applied in the analysis
of time use (12–15). A brief description of the model will be given
in the next section.
Instead of actual fuel consumption, the fuel consumption frontier
was considered in this study for two reasons: (a) the assumptions
on the travel time frontier lead to better model fit than the ordinary
Li, Miwa, and Morikawa 101

linear regression model and (b) for some purposes, the extreme situ-
ation is more relevant than the average situation. The availability of
information on the upper limits of fuel consumption will be useful
in the analysis of energy and environmental policies.
This paper describes the methodology used for stochastic fron-
tier modeling with panel data. The paper describes the CAN data
that were used in the study and provides some descriptive statistics.
Detailed model specifications and estimation results are described
and some analyses are also presented, based on the estimation
results. Conclusions and directions for future research are given
in the final section.
From Equation 2, it can be found that the expected values of
VFCF and VFCE are equal only when the expected value of error
term uid is 0. Since uid is nonnegative, exp(−uid) must be less than
1. Therefore, drivers’ VFCF (the budget) must be larger than the
VFCE (the actual fuel consumption). The distribution of uid decides
the differences between VFCF and VFCE.
In a stochastic frontier model, τid is further presented as
τ id = b′ X id + vid (3)
Then

Methodology Fid = b′ X id + vid − uid (4)

The ordinary linear regression model is often the first choice to model where
the relationships between variables. However, previous studies on car
usage behavior suggest that there exists a budget for travelers’ daily car  = vector of coefficients,
usage, which means that there is a maximum value of daily car usage X = vector of explanatory variables, and
and drivers’ actual daily car usage must be less than this budget. The vid = random error term, such that vid ∈ (−∞, +∞).
ordinary linear regression model cannot incorporate this factor explic-
itly. Therefore, this study used a methodology that was mainly based
on a stochastic frontier model of vehicles’ daily fuel consumption. The Model with Interindividual Variation
linear regression model was included as a benchmark.
Considering only the interindividual variation in VFCF, the stochastic
frontier model will be
Stochastic Frontier Model
Fi = α + bi′ X i + vi − ui
The stochastic frontier model was originally proposed for efficiency
and productivity analysis (11). In its original definition, the pro- vi ∼ N [ 0, σ 2v ]
duction frontier represents the maximum amount of products that a
ui ∼ N [ 0, σ u2 ] (5)
producer can produce given the available resources. Therefore, the
producer’s observed scalar output must be less than the production
frontier. Similarly, each car user can be seen as a producer, while where
the scalar output is the observed vehicles’ daily fuel consumption.
vi = an assumed normal distribution (N),
Then, in the standard form, a stochastic frontier model for vehicle
ui = an assumed half-normal distribution, and
fuel consumption can be proposed as
σ 2v and σ 2u = 
variances of corresponding normal distributed
variables.
Fid = ln ( fid ) and Fid = τ id − uid (1)
Different from Equation 4, all the variables in Equation 5 have only
where one subscript, i. In the applications, Fi represents the mean car usage
time of individual i over the survey period. Then, VFCF is log-normally
fid = observed vehicle fuel consumption of individual
distributed:
i on day d,
Fid = log transformation of fid,
exp(Fid) = fid = observed vehicle fuel consumption expenditure VFCFi ∼ log_ N (µ τi , σ 2τi )
(VFCE),
 µ + σ τi 
2
exp(τid) = unobserved vehicle fuel consumption frontier E ( VFCFi ) = exp  τi 
(VFCF) of individual i on day d, and  2 
uid = random term that must take nonnegative values.
var ( VFCFi ) = ( exp (σ 2τi ) − 1) i exp ( 2µ τi + σ 2τi )
The log transformation of the dependent variable, which is consis-
tent with the original specification of the stochastic frontier model, µ τi = E (α + bi′ X i + vi ) = α + bi′ X i
takes into account the skewed nature of fuel consumption and ensures σ 2τi = var (α + bi′ X i + vi ) = σ 2v (6)
positive predictions. The following is obtained from Equation 1:

fid Model with Interindividual

= exp ( − uid ) (2)
exp ( τ id ) and Intraindividual Variation

where exp(−uid) is the technical efficiency of the producer in the In this study, VFCF was individual day–specific, but for each indi-
original specification. In this study, it represents the ratio between vidual, there were observations on multiple days. Therefore, unlike
VFCE and VFCF. the cross-section specifications, VFCF was modeled with panel
102
data. A random parameter specification (16) was applied for panel
data and unobserved heterogeneity. The general formulation is
Fid = (α + wi ) + bi′ X id + gi′ Z i + vid − uid
wi ∼ N [ 0, σ 2w ]
vid ∼ N [ 0, σ 2v ]
uid ∼ N [ 0, σ u2 ]
bi ∼ N (mb, Vb )
gi ∼ N (mg, Vg )
where
Zi = vector of time-invariant explanatory variables (e.g.,
gender),
Xid = vector of time-variant explanatory variables,
′i and gi = individual-specific vectors of parameters,
µb and µ = vectors of parameter means, and
b and  = positive definite covariance matrixes.
 and  are diagonal, assuming the random parameters are inde-
pendent. The coefficients of the explanatory variables are assumed to be
normally distributed. In this specification, wi and i′Zi are interindividual
variant, while ′i Xid and the random error vid are intraindividual variant.
It is assumed that all random variables in Equation 7 are
independent. Then VFCF is log-normally distributed:
VFCFid ∼ log_ N (µ τid , σ τ2id )
 µ + σ τid 
2
E ( VFCFid ) = exp  τid
 
2 – Displacement (L):
var ( VFCFid ) = ( exp (σ τ2id ) − 1) i exp ( 2µ τid + σ τ2id )
µ τid = E ((α + wi ) + bi′ X id + gi′ Z i + vid )
= α + mb′ X id + mg′ Z i
σ 2τid = var ((α + wi ) + bi′ X id + gi′ Z i + vid )
= σ 2w + X id′ i Vb i X id + Z i′ i Vg i Z i + σ 2v
In Equation 5, the coefficients can also be assumed to be random.
However, to estimate a random parameter model, a large sample
size is required. In this study, the data were collected from 153 indi-
viduals. Therefore, there were at most 153 observations for the esti-
mation of the model only incorporating interindividual variation, in
which each driver’s vehicle fuel consumption was aggregated over
the survey period. It would not be meaningful to assume a random
parameter specification for Equation 5 with such a small data set.
The proposed model can be estimated by the maximum like-
lihood procedure. The model estimation was accomplished with
LIMDEP (17).
Data and Descriptive Statistics
Data
The study used data from the CAN data collected from private
vehicles. The data were collected from private vehicles in Toyota
City in 2011 as a part of a project related to green mobility. Unlike
Transportation Research Record 2503
some other Japanese cities (such as Tokyo), which are heavily depen-
dent on public transportation systems, Toyota is a city on wheels.
More than 200 drivers participated in the survey. Onboard equipment
installed in private cars logged the CAN data, including driving
operations and real-time fuel consumption, as well as GPS trajec-
tory data. The data were uploaded to the Internet by the partici-
pants every week. The data were collected over a period of about
10 months (March to December 2011). Not all participants took part
in the survey for the entire period. After some basic data-cleaning
work, data collected from 153 drivers remained for use in this study.
The following list gives a basic description of driver and vehicle
characteristics:
(7)
• Drivers:
– Gender: male = 141, female = 12;
– Age (years):
• Mean (standard deviation) = 44.56 (11.06),
• Younger than 35 = 37,
• 35 to 50 = 60, and
• Older than 50 = 56;
– Occupation:
• Company employee = 40,
• Organization employee = 90, and
• Unknown = 23;
• Vehicles:
– Type: normal = 73, hybrid = 82;
– Capacity (kg):
• Mean (standard deviation) = 1,225.69 (576.16),
• Less than 1,000 = 61,
• 1,000 to 1,500 = 32, and
• More than 1,500 = 60; and
• Mean (standard deviation) = 1.93 (0.46),
• Less than 1.6 = 30,
• 1.6 to 2 = 107, and
• More than 2 = 46.
Part of the road network is shown in Figure 1.
(8)
Interindividual and Intraindividual Variation
Initially, the study compared the interindividual and intraindividual
variations in vehicle fuel consumption. To determine the intra­
individual variation, the coefficient of variation of vehicle fuel con-
sumption was calculated for each driver, that is, the ratio between
the standard deviation and mean of each driver’s daily vehicle fuel
consumption over the survey period. Figure 2 shows the resulting
histogram. To show the interindividual variation, for each driver,
vehicle fuel consumption was averaged over the survey period. The
ratio between the standard deviation and mean of individual-specific
average vehicle fuel consumption is 0.46. From Figure 2, for less
than 10% of the 153 drivers, intraindividual variation was lower than
the interindividual variation.
Working Days and Holidays
Drivers’ car usage patterns on working days can be expected to
differ from patterns on holidays, according to empirical experi-
ence. Therefore, Figure 3 compares the individual-specific mean
 0 0.9120

kilometers
Scale: 1:39,610

Toyota City Hall

FIGURE 1   Part of road network of Toyota City.

0.9
0.8
0.7
Frequency

0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Coefficient of Variation of Vehicle Fuel Consumption

FIGURE 2   Histogram of coefficients of variation. Ratio of standard deviation to

mean of individual-specific average daily vehicle fuel consumption is 0.46.

5
WMVFC-MVFC
4 HMVFC-MVFC
MVFC
Fuel Consumption (L)

–1

–2
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Driver ID

FIGURE 3   Comparison of car usage time on working days and holidays (ID = identification).
104 Transportation Research Record 2503

3 15
WMVFC
2.9
HMVFC
Mean temperature
2.7

Fuel Consumption (L)

2.5 10

2.3

2.1
5
1.9

1.7

1.5 0
March April May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.
Month

FIGURE 4   Average vehicle fuel consumption each month (Aug. 5 August;
Sept. 5 September; Oct. 5 October; Nov. 5 November; Dec. 5 December).

car usage time on working days and holidays. Figure 3 shows the
following:
• MVFC is the individual-specific mean vehicle fuel consumption
over the whole survey period.
• WMVFC is the individual-specific mean vehicle fuel consump-
tion on working days over the whole survey period.
• HMVFC is the individual-specific mean vehicle fuel consump-
tion on holidays over the whole survey period.
The figure shows that most drivers (106 of 153 respondents)
consume more fuel on holidays than on working days. The average
WMVFC value is 2.00 L, while the average HMVFC value is 2.56 L.
Time Variant
Figure 4 shows the average daily vehicle fuel consumption for each
month. Drivers’ vehicle fuel consumption varies significantly in
different months. The figure also shows the monthly average tem-
perature, which indicates that the drivers’ vehicle fuel consump-
tion on working days is related to the mean temperature, while the
relationship on holidays is not significant.
Space Variant
The relationship between vehicle fuel consumption and home location
is shown in Figure 5. From the figure, individuals who live further

4.5

4
Vehicle Fuel Consumption (L)

3.5

2.5

1.5

1 R 2 = .34

0.5

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Distance to City Center (km)
(a)

FIGURE 5   Relationship between vehicle fuel consumptions and drivers’ home locations:
(a) working days.
(continued)
Li, Miwa, and Morikawa 105

Vehicle Fuel Consumption (L)

6

5 R 2 = .09

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Distance to City Center (km)
(b)

FIGURE 5 (continued)   Relationship between vehicle fuel consumptions and drivers’

home locations: (b) holidays.

from the city center (i.e., from city hall) are likely to consume more
fuel for driving on working days and holidays. However, the rela-
tionship between vehicle fuel consumption and distance to the city
center on working days is more significant than that on holidays.
Estimation and Analysis
Estimated Models
According to the basic statistics, drivers’ vehicle fuel consumption on
holidays is quite different from that on working days. Therefore, the
study estimated two random parameter models based on Equation 7:
Estimation Results
The estimation results are shown in Tables 2 and 3. The final log
likelihoods of the proposed random parameter stochastic frontier
models (Model 1_W and Model 1_H) are significantly higher than
those of the models with deterministic coefficients (Model 2_W and
Model 2_H). The p-values of the likelihood-ratio test approach 0.
This finding indicates that it is necessary to consider the panel data
specification and unobserved heterogeneity when modeling vehicle
daily fuel consumption. The log likelihoods of the frontier models are
TABLE 1   Explanatory Variables Included in Estimated Models

• Model 1_W. VFCF on working days and Variable Descriptions

• Model 1_H. VFCF on holidays.
Interindividual variant
 Log_Mean_Dept_ Log transformation of mean departure time
To demonstrate the necessity of the random parameter specifica-
Time of the daily first trip over the whole survey
tion, two other models, based on Equation 7 with constant coefficients, period (the beginning of 1 day is set to
were also estimated for comparison with Models 1 and 2: 4:00 a.m.)
 Dist_To_Center Distance between home location and Toyota
• Model 2_W. VFCF on working days, but set as σ w2 = 0,  = 0, City Hall
 Male Dummy variable, 1 for male
and  = 0 and
 Age Age in years of the principal driver
• Model 2_H. VFCF on holidays, but set as σ 2w = 0,  = 0, and  C_Employee Dummy variable, 1 for company employee
 = 0.  O_Employee Dummy variable, 1 for organization employee
 Hybrid Dummy variable, 1 for hybrid vehicle
As a benchmark, two ordinary linear regression models were also  Car_Capacity Capacity of car; unit: ton
 Car_Displacement Displacement of car; unit: L
estimated:
Intraindividual variant
• Model 0_W. with the same formulation as Model 2_W, but set  Log_Dept_Time Log transformation of departure time of the
first trip for each day (the beginning of one
as σ 2u = 0 and day is set to 4:00 a.m.);
• Model 0_H. with the same formulation as Model 2_H, but set  Rain Dummy variable, 1 for rainy day
as σ 2u = 0.  Temp_LT_20 Temp_LT_20 = maximize (20-daily mean
temperature, 0); Unit: centigrade
 Temp_HT_26 Temp_HT_26 = maximize (26-daily mean
The explanatory variables included in these models are described temperature, 0); unit: centigrade
in Table 1.
106 Transportation Research Record 2503

TABLE 2   Estimation Results of Models for Working Days

Coefficient (p-Value)

Variable Model 1_Wa Model 2_Wa Model 0_Wa

Means of Parameters
Constant 1.095 (.00) 1.021 (.00) .718 (.00)
Log_Dept_Time −.132 (.00) −.166 (.00) −.247 (.00)
Rain −.027 (.00) −.030 (.02) −.033 (.01)
Temp_LT_20 −.003 (.04) .002 (.08) .003 (.05)
Temp_HT_26 .071 (.00) .065 (.00) .061 (.00)
Dist_To_Center .053 (.00) .044 (.00) .047 (.00)
Male .137 (.00) .163 (.00) .122 (.00)
Age −.005 (.00) −.001 (.03) −.001 (.29)
C_Employee .065 (.00) .143 (.00) .143 (.00)
O_Employee .045 (.02) .073 (.00) .079 (.00)
Hybrid −.049 (.01) .067 (.00) .095 (.00)
Car_Capacity −.204 (.00) −.069 (.00) −.056 (.00)
Car_Displacement .274 (.00) .248 (.00) .227 (.00)
Standard Deviations of Parameters
Log_Dept_Time .031 (.00) na na
Rain .029 (.00) na na
Temp_LT_20 .010 (.00) na na
Temp_HT_26 .031 (.00) na na
Dist_To_Center .006 (.00) na na
Male .047 (.00) na na
Age .009 (.00) na na
C_Employee .101 (.00) na na
O_Employee .041 (.00) na na
Hybrid .110 (.00) na na
Car_Capacity .025 (.00) na na
Car_Displacement .017 (.00) na na
σw .120 na na
σv .545 .619 .927
σu .883 .961 na
L(C) −25,684.18 −25,684.18 −26,354.52
L(β) −22,465.45 −24,320.11 −24,964.16

Note: na = not applicable; L (C) and L (β) = log likelihood at constant and estimates, respectively.
a
Number of observations = 19,621.

also significantly higher than the ordinary linear regression models,
indicating that it is necessary to consider unobserved budgets when
modeling vehicle fuel consumption.
The estimation results for Model 1_W show that, at the signifi-
cance level of .05, all the explanatory variables have a significant
effect on vehicle fuel consumption on working days. The signs of
the estimated parameters suggest that a driver will consume more
fuel on working days when the departure time of the first trip is
earlier, it is not rainy, the temperature is higher, home is further
away from the city center, gender is male, the driver is younger,
occupation is company employee, car type is not hybrid, car capac-
ity is lower, and car displacement is higher. It is also clear that the
marginal effect of temperature on fuel consumption is greater when
the temperature is higher.
The estimation results for Model 1_H differ slightly from those
of Model 1_W. The main differences are that rain and high tempera-
ture do not significantly affect fuel consumption on holidays. Unlike
on working days, drivers with hybrid cars consume more fuel than
drivers with ordinary cars during holidays.
Predictions
The expected VFCF for each observation was calculated from Equa-
tions 6 and 8 with the estimated parameters given in Tables 2 and 3.
Distributions of actual VFCE and VFCE predicted by the linear
regression models were also calculated for comparison with the
expected VFCFs.
Distributions of expected VFCFs as well as actual VFCE and
VFCE predicted by linear regression models are shown in Figure 6.
The figure shows that the distributions of expected VFCFs are a little
more spread out than the VFCE distributions. As expected, the distri-
butions of expected VFCFs are to the right of the actual usage times.
The average expected VFCF on working days is 3.60 L; the corre-
Li, Miwa, and Morikawa 107

TABLE 3   Estimation Results of Models for Holidays

Coefficient (p-value)

Variable Model 1_Ha Model 2_Ha Model 0_Ha

Means of Parameters
Constant 2.281 (.00) 2.922 (.00) 1.941 (.00)
Log_Dept_Time −.347 (.00) −.361 (.00) −.401 (.00)
Rain −.007 (.79) −.002 (.96) .043 (.17)
Temp_LT_20 −.005 (.05) .004 (.16) .007 (.03)
Temp_HT_26 .017 (.26) .024 (.13) .038 (.03)
Dist_To_Center .019 (.00) .022 (.00) .027 (.00)
Male .434 (.00) .168 (.00) .123 (.02)
Age −.008 (.00) −.013 (.00) −.012 (.00)
C_Employee .292 (.00) .099 (.01) .028 (.50)
O_Employee .180 (.00) .070 (.05) −.012 (.75)
Hybrid .084 (.05) .092 (.02) .203 (.00)
Car_Capacity −.108 (.01) −.059 (.12) .025 (.57)
Car_Displacement .557 (.00) .523 (.00) .423 (.00)
Standard Deviations of Parameters
Log_Dept_Time .035 (.00) na na
Rain .116 (.00) na na
Temp_LT_20 .002 (.25) na na
Temp_HT_26 .118 (.00) na na
Dist_To_Center .008 (.00) na na
Male .066 (.00) na na
Age .009 (.00) na na
C_Employee .041 (.09) na na
O_Employee .009 (.56) na na
Hybrid .153 (.00) na na
Car_Capacity .036 (.00) na na
Car_Displacement .039 (.00) na na
σw .035 na na
σv .571 .649 1.189
σu 1.499 1.575 na
L(C) −12,150.39 −12,150.39 −12,624.37
L(β) −11,339.21 −11,746.08 −12,254.47
a
Number of observations = 7,702.

sponding value on holidays is 6.97 L. These findings indicate that
drivers’ budgets for daily fuel consumption on holidays are double
those on working days. The average actual VFCEs are 1.98 L and
2.57 L on working days and holidays, respectively. Thus, the expected
VFCFs are about double the corresponding actual car fuel consump-
tion. This means that, on average, people have the potential to double
their fuel consumption. It should be noted that although the shapes of
the distributions of VFCEs predicted by the linear regression models
are much closer to the actual VFCEs, the frontier models in fact have
much better model fit than the linear regression models.
Conclusions
In this study, interindividual and intraindividual variations were incor-
porated into a VFCF model. VFCF was defined as the unobserved
maximum amount of fuel that an individual is willing to spend for
driving. Long-term CAN data collected from private cars in Toyota
City were used in the study. A stochastic frontier model with panel data
was employed as the methodology to identify the unobserved VFCF.
From the descriptive statistics, the intraindividual variation in daily
vehicle fuel consumption is much greater than the interindividual
variation in the data set. Drivers’ fuel consumption patterns on work-
ing days are very different from those on holidays. Actual vehicle
fuel consumption (expenditure) was also found to be time variant
and space variant.
The proposed models were estimated and compared with cross-
section specifications and linear regression models that did not con-
sider the unobserved budgets. From the estimation results, the models
with random coefficients provided a much better fit. Drivers’ VFCFs
on working days are significantly affected by the departure time of
their first trip, weather, temperature, home location, gender, age, and
occupation. All these explanatory variables, except temperature and
weather, also significantly affect VFCFs on holidays. The engine type
108 Transportation Research Record 2503

0.9

0.8
VFCF predicted by Model 1_W (mean = 3.60 L)
VFCF predicted by Model 2_W (mean = 3.71 L)
0.7
VFCE predicted by Model 0_W (mean = 2.21 L)
Actual VFCE on working days (mean = 1.98 L)
0.6

Frequency 0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Fuel Consumption (L)
(a)

0.8

0.7
VFCF predicted by Model 1_H (mean = 6.97 L)
VFCF predicted by Model 2_H (mean = 6.63 L)
0.6 VFCE predicted by Model 0_H (mean = 3.34 L)
Actual VFCE on holidays (mean = 2.57 L)

0.5
Frequency

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Fuel Consumption (L)
(b)

FIGURE 6   Distributions of predicted VFCF and actual VFCE: (a) working days
and (b) holidays.

of the vehicles (i.e., hybrid vehicle or not) has opposite effects on
VFCFs on working days and holidays.
The estimated parameters were used to calculate expected VFCFs,
which were compared with actual VFCEs. The average expected
VFCF on working days was found to be 3.60 L; the corresponding
value on holidays was found to be 6.97 L.
The methodology and findings reported in this paper are directly
applicable to energy policy analysis and carbon emissions estimation.
In this study, drivers’ driving behavior was not considered. In future
research, driving patterns will be analyzed and the CAN data will be
combined with the fuel consumption analysis. Fuel consumption is
only one measure of drivers’ car usage. A frontier model with multi-
outputs could be developed to consider the correlations between
different car usage measures, such as travel time and mileage.
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The Standing Committee on Transportation and Air Quality peer-reviewed this
paper.