Semi-Autonomous Electric Vehicles in Platooning Mode and Their Effects on Travel Time: A Framework for Simulation Evaluation

Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) have received a lot of attention in recent years. However, there are still numerous challenges in this field. In this paper, we investigated the effects of dynamic-flexible platooning on travel time by considering real-world trips data. For this purpose we extended the platooning capabilities of the 3DCoAutosim simulation platform, and proposed a dynamic-flexible model that we validated by creating use cases on traffic efficiency. We studied our dynamic-flexible platooning case for three electric vans with an autonomous leader, a semi-autonomous first follower with a driver, and an autonomous last follower. Results showed that the model developed in this study is efficient to investigate the effects of dynamic-flexible platooning on travel time.