Analyzing Network-wide Energy Consumption of Electric Vehicles in a Multimodal Traffic Context: Insights from Drone Data

Abstract

The environmental benefits and driving range of electric vehicles are closely related to their energy consumption. In this paper, we analyze the energy consumption characteristics of electric mobility systems in a multimodal urban traffic context by establishing the aggregated relationships between macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD) dynamics and network-wide energy consumption. To do this, we utilize a data-based approach, combining vehicle trajectories collected by a swarm of drones in the downtown areas of Athens, Greece, during the pNEUMA experiment with microscopic energy consumption models. We assume all the trajectories are driven by electric vehicles yet maintain the same behavior observed in the pNEUMA dataset. Preliminary results show well-defined relationships between aggregated traffic parameters and energy consumption at a network level. The total energy consumption of electric cars and buses in the network increases linearly with vehicle accumulation under uncongested traffic conditions. At the same time, the energy consumption per distance traveled by electric buses significantly decreases as the spatial mean speed increases. While for electric cars, the impact of spatial mean speed on energy consumption is marginal, especially when the average speed is above 10 km/h.