Exploring the environmental potential of battery electric vehicles using the case study ITS Huainan

Abstract

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are considered as one of the solutions to combat climate change. This paper used the ITS Huainan case study to explore the city-wide environmental and energy impacts of BEVs. Different BEV rates, the representative traffic states, calibrated with the traffic simulation SUMO at 5-min intervals, and the weather effect were considered. The result shows the apparent contribution of BEVs to emission and fuel reduction. The weather influence on the electricity consumption was captured by the applied energy model. Moreover, the improvement on vehicle emission classes has much more influence/contribution on the reductions in HC, NOx and PMx than the introduction of BEVs. It implies that old vehicles should be phased out at an even faster pace. The overall work also showed that traffic simulation tools, together with real-time data collected through innovative ITS systems, are an appropriate solution for strategy evaluation and decision support.