Energy-Efficient Route Navigation (Eco-Routing) for Electric Vehicles in SUMO

Abstract

The diffusion of electric vehicles (EVs) is recently gaining great attention in the road transport and automotive sectors as an attempt to bring in an emission-free world. EVs are considered a key to future clean transportation systems. However, these vehicles still suffer from limited battery capacity and range anxiety. Therefore, EVs manufacturers are focusing on reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In addition, research in the context of intelligent transportation systems embedding information and communication technologies are focusing on the optimization of the energy consumption as a valuable solution to foster the wide diffusion of EVs. In this article, we propose a simulation platform for eco-routing services based on estimating EV energy consumption to provide the most energy-efficient routes for the EV while traveling. We provide an energy map that can be used for eco-routing through a real-time data collection of the EV energy consumption. The energy map was established in the traffic simulator Simulation of Urban MObility (SUMO) to show the efficiency of the proposed eco-routing strategy compared to the other strategies based on establishing the fastest routes. This map will be exploited as good support, in the future, for advanced research on the EV concept.