Empirical evidence of connected environment driving on fuel consumption and emissions

A connected environment allows the sharing of information that can homogenise traffic flow by assisting drivers during their driving tasks, which may impact fuel consumption and emissions. However, this impact of connected environment driving is largely hypothesised or assessed via numerical simulations that lack factors reflecting human driving behaviour. This study fills this gap by investigating fuel consumption and emissions in a novel connected environment, which assists in making real-time decisions by creating 360º awareness of surrounding traffic. Using high-quality microscopic data obtained through a driving simulator, the fuel consumption and pollutant emissions of 78 participants are computed using four models from the literature. Results indicate that connected environment driving significantly reduces fuel consumption and pollutant emissions relative to a traditional driving environment, with the largest reduction being observed when responding to changes in traffic lights. Overall, results provide evidence of fuel savings in the connected environment using experimental data.