PSU Faculty Present Electric Vehicle Research at TRB

Students and faculty researchers from OTREC universities presented papers at the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting Jan. 22 - 26 in Washington, D.C.  Three of the papers presented during the conference focused on transportation electrification.  Dr. Jennifer Dill, PSU, presented E-bikes and Transportation Policy: Insights from Early Adopters, at a poster session -- a paper she wrote with Dr. Geoffrey Rose of Monash University.  The paper presents findings from interviews with 28 e-bike owners in the Portland, Oregon region. These interviews revealed several possible demographic markets for e-bikes that could expand the overall share of the population bicycling: women, older adults, and people with physical limitations. One finding found that owners enjoyed the ability to travel with relative ease for longer distances and over hills and to arrive at a destination, such as work, less sweaty, or tired than with a regular bicycle.

Dr. Miguel Figliozzi, PSU, and his students Wei Feng and Brian Davis presented two papers on electric commercial vehicles (ECV) and trucks. The Competitiveness of Commercial Electric Vehicles in the LTL Delivery Industry, presents a detailed model of the logistics performance, energy use, and costs of electric vehicles and comparable diesel internal-combustion engine vehicles. The model is applied to the study the competitiveness of three vehicles of similar weight and size in the USA market: a widely available conventional diesel truck and two electric trucks. This research shows that for electric trucks to be competitive, the cost savings from the reduced operational cost must be sufficient to overcome the much higher initial purchase cost of electric trucks. This effect can be heightened when the tighter constraints on electric vehicles lead to the purchase of additional vehicles above and beyond the required number of conventional vehicles. For electric trucks to be a viable alternative, some combination of the following factors must be present:

1. Daily distances travelled are high, approaching the electric trucks maximum range of 100 miles (but the battery energy constraint is not binding).

2. Low speeds or congestion and traffic jams are prevalent in the area of the route.

3. Customer stops are frequent and numerous, and a conventional truck would typically idle during these stops.

4. The trucks are loaded to a high percentage of their capacity.

5. The time constraint (rather than the energy or capacity constraints) is binding.

6. Since the electric engine is more energy efficient, grades or other factors exist which cause

increased expenditures of energy (but where the battery energy constraint is not binding).

7. The planning horizon is extended beyond ten years.

The other paper, Impacts of Economic, Technological and Operational Factors on the Economic Competitiveness of Electric Commercial Vehicles in Fleet Replacement Decisions, employed a fleet replacement optimization framework to analyze the competitiveness of ECVs. Scenarios with different fleet utilization, fuel efficiency and sensitivity analysis of ten additional factors indicate that ECVs are more cost effective when conventional diesel vehicles’ fuel efficiency is low (8.2 miles/gallon) and daily utilization is more than 54 miles. Six scenarios were evaluated to reflect demand and operating environment variability between fleets. Results show that when diesel trucks are operated in an environment with 8.2mi/gal (or 13.46mi/gal) fuel efficiency and annual utilization is higher than 14,138 mi/year/truck (or 22,272 mi/year/truck), electric trucks can be more economic competitive than conventional diesel trucks. These annual utilization levels are within a realistic electric vehicle range of battery capacity (54 and 86 miles/day/truck).

See Dr. Figliozzi's website for papers: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~maf/publications.html#Forthcoming

Tags: n/a

Share: