“Journey Mapping”–A New Approach for Defining Automotive Drive Cycles

Driving is full of unpredictability and uncertainty. Standardized drive cycles, traditionally defined as velocity-time profiles serve as test-beds for performance prediction. However, these generalized patterns do not offer real-life testing scenarios for every trip a vehicle might encounter during its life-cycle. Thus, the “Journey Mapping” concept is highlighted in this paper, which re-defines drive cycles more realistically as the journey of a vehicle from an origin to the destination influenced by weather, terrain, traffic, driver behavior, road and aerodynamic conditions. AMESim software simulations for a Ford Focus Electric 2012 were seen to predict energy consumption with about five percent error on average compared to the true vehicle values.