A methodology to estimate real-world vehicle fuel use and emissions based on certification cycle data

This work presents a methodology to estimate vehicle fuel consumption and NO mass emission rates using only public certification data from individual vehicles. Using on-road data collected from 14 vehicles it was possible to establish trends of fuel use and emissions according with the power demand, using the Vehicle Specific Power methodology, which were further applied to estimate modal fuel consumption and NOx emission rates on Diesel vehicles. Comparing with real-world operation, fuel consumption estimates presented average absolute deviations lower than 10%. Regarding NOx estimates, average absolute deviation is around 22%. With this method it is possible to evaluate an individual vehicle using public data without have to measure it on-road and establishing links between certification and real-world vehicle operation. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.