Impacts on Energy Consumption of Autonomous Vehicles in the Bay Area

ABOUT THE PROJECT

At a glance

Vehicle energy consumption strongly depends on three interdependent variables: vehicle miles traveled, vehicle efficiency, and the travel cost. In the future, the popularization of autonomous vehicles could substantially change the travel cost in two aspects: the travel time and the driving behavior. In this project, we aim at quantifying the potential energy consumption impacts of autonomous vehicles used for personal travel (light-duty) in the Bay Area by assuming the travel demand and the vehicle efficiency unchanged.

Our research group seeks to support informed policy decisions by leveraging on personalized data generated via information and communication technologies. In this proposal, we plan to adopt a calibrated modeling framework of urban mobility to further generate reliable and efficient estimates to evaluate the energy consumption of autonomous vehicles at different adoption scenarios in the Bay Area. Namely, we will contrast the benefits of the transition from regular to autonomous vehicles in decreasing energy consumption, by considering all vehicles are electrically driven.