70 Chris Manzie

In the case of the mild hybrid configuration, the vehicle’s fuel economy improved
from 11.8 l/100 km over the Australian urban cycle to 10.4 l/100 km as a result of this
exercise. Over the other two drive cycles, similar improvement was noticed following
hybridisation. These efficiency increases in the range of 10–15% are typical of the
reported gains through mild hybridisation of a large vehicle and are primarily due to
engine shutoff being enabled when the vehicle is stationary.
For the optimised hybrid configuration, the fuel economy is further improved for all
three drive cycles, with 15–25% reduction observed relative to the benchmark conven-
tional vehicle. Naturally, the fuel economy over urban drive cycles could be even better
for a production version of all vehicles if the performance constraints imposed during the
optimisation process were relaxed partially, or if further development in reducing the
vehicle coefficient of drag or weight was achieved.
Having established the two levels of hybrid configuration and characterised their
performance over different urban drive cycles, the performance of the conventional
vehicle with its velocity trajectory shaped using surrounding information can be con-
sidered. The next section discusses velocity scheduling algorithms intended to minimise
fuel consumption.

3. VELOCITY SCHEDULING USING TRAFFIC PREVIEW

There are several approaches that can be taken to specify the velocity profile to be
used by the intelligent vehicle. In the first instance, the vehicle model can be simplified
appropriately to allow the application of generic optimisation approaches such as
Pontryagin’s minimum principle [23]. This avenue is explored in Section 3.1. The
alternative is to develop ad hoc approaches, but test these on more realistic vehicle
models. This latter approach is discussed in Section 3.2 and allows more complexity to
be investigated in the models and the results.

3.1 Optimal velocity profiles using simplified models

If complete trip information is known a priori, optimal control theory may be used to
develop a vehicle velocity profile that maximises fuel economy [24, 25]. In order to
make the problem tenable for parametric solutions using Pontryagin’s Minimimum
Principle, the following simplifying assumptions are necessary.
Assumption 1: The trip duration, T, and the final position of the vehicle,
T
xðT Þ ¼ ∫ vðτÞdτ, are known at the commencement of the journey.
0
Assumption 2: The gear ratio of the vehicle is fixed.
Assumption 3: The propulsive force generated by the engine is a linear function of the
fuel use, mfuel(t), and vehicle speed, v(t), according to: