Real-world fuel consumption of light-duty passenger vehicles using on-board diagnostic (OBD) systems

Highlights

• Fuel consumption (FC) from LDPVs is measured using on-board diagnostic method (OBD).

• The FC of the OBD is 7.1% lower than that of the carbon balance results.

• The discrepancy between the approved FC and real-world FC is 13%±18%.

• There is a strong relationship (R²=0.984) between the average speed and relative FC.

Abstract

An increasing discrepancy between real-world and type-approval fuel consumption for light-duty passenger vehicles (LDPVs) has been reported by several studies. Normally, real-world fuel consumption is measured primarily by a portable emission measurement system. The on-board diagnostic (OBD) approach, which is flexible and offers high-resolution data collection, is a promising fuel consumption monitoring method. Three LDPVs were tested with a laboratory dynamometer based on a type-approval cycle, the New European Driving Cycle (NEDC). Fuel consumption was measured by the OBD and constant-volume sampling system (CVS, a regulatory method) to verify the accuracy of the OBD values. The results of the OBD method and the regulatory carbon balance method exhibited a strong linear correlation (e.g., R² = 0.906-0.977). Compared with the carbon balance results, the fuel consumption results using the OBD were 7.1%±4.3% lower on average. Furthermore, the real-world fuel consumption of six LDPVs was tested in Beijing using the OBD. The results showed that the normalized NEDC real-world fuel consumption of the tested vehicles was 13%±17% higher than the type-approval-based fuel consumption. Because the OBD values are lower than the actual fuel consumption, using a carbon balance method may result in a larger discrepancy between real-word and type-approval fuel consumption. By means of the operating mode binning and micro trip methods, a strong relationship (R² = 0.984) was established between the average speed and relative fuel consumption. For congested roads (average vehicle speed less than 25 km/h), the fuel consumption of LDPVs is highly sensitive to changes in average speed.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Fuel consumption / Light-duty passenger vehicles / On-board diagnostic systems

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Nos. 2017YFC0211100 and 2017YFC0212100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51708327, 91544222 and 51978404) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China’s International Science and Technology Cooperation Program (No. 2016YFE0106300). The contents of this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsors.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-019-1212-6 and is accessible for authorized users.

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