Strategies to minimize fuel consumption of passenger cars during car-following scenarios

One of the important factors that affects a vehicle's fuel consumption is how it is driven. For a passenger car with an internal combustion engine and continuous variable transmission, this paper quantitatively identified its fuel-optimal driving operations in car-following scenarios and extracted two useful strategies with implementable profiles, Pulse-and-Gliding (PnG) and Constant Speed (CS). After further analysis, it is concluded that as the preceding vehicle's speed increases, a partial Pulse-and-Gliding, full-Pulse-and-Gliding and Constant Speed strategy becomes optimal successively; and their selection is mainly dominated by both static and transient fueling characteristics of engine. Moreover, in a full-PnG operation, engine always switches between minimum BSFC point and idling point while the range error oscillates between its upper and lower bounds.