‘Intelligent’ cars as fuel-efficient as hybrids
The technology for road telematics already exists, but given questions on safety and other issues that surround it, it is only being deployed in a small handful of field tests.
Engineers at Australia’s University of Melbourne compared how the two novel technologies matched up on fuel efficiency.
They used an unconverted saloon, or sedan, as the benchmark and three different driving cycles, configured to the Australian, American and European urban lifestyles, for the test runs.
A hybrid version of the car would deliver fuel economy of 15-25 percent over the unconverted vehicle, they calculated.
But this saving was matched when the benchmark car was fitted with basic telematics that predicted traffic flows as little as seven seconds ahead, as determined by the Australian drive cycle.
Here’s my brilliant idea: how about doing both things – make it a hybrid AND fit telematics
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