Take the green way home
New navigation tools will help drivers maximize their energy efficiency.
If your car's computerized navigation system gave you the option to choose the most energy efficient route to your next destination and you weren't in a hurry, would you take it? Researchers at Stanford University and the University of California's Riverside and Berkeley campuses have teamed up with automotive engineers to add this kind of "green mapping" option to Audi's high-performance automobiles.
Announced at the most recent Los Angeles Auto Show, the $650,000 "Clean Air, a Viable Planet" project is the first of its kind in the automotive world, according to Chuhee Lee, principal engineer with Audi. The project is based on the fact that any vehicle, regardless of its fuel-economy rating, will use less fuel if it can cruise at a constant speed rather than speeding up, slowing down, and idling in traffic.
The technology exists today to compute multiple routes to a destination depending on whether drivers wish to optimize for time, distance, or fuel consumption—or even find a pizza parlor along the way, says Matt Barth, professor of electrical engineering and director of UC Riverside's College of Engineering Center for Environmental Research and Technology. "In fact, the program may even allow savvy users to go as far as to choose routes to minimize their emissions of individual pollutants, including carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter," he says.
The researchers are working with mapping companies, who are in the final phases of developing 3D programs that include elevation as well as latitude and longitude, says Jim Misener, principal development engineer for UC Berkeley's Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways program. The development team is also trying to determine whether they can use vehicles with geographical positioning systems as sensors to collect information about traffic patterns, Lee says.
"Our goal is to be part of a real solution to the constant dilemma commuters face: what is the best way to get there? Sometimes the best way . . . is the one that causes the least damage to the planet," Barth concludes.
