Journey Mapping—A New Approach for Defining Automotive Drive Cycles

Driving is full of unpredictability and uncertainty. Standardized drive cycles, traditionally defined as velocity-time profiles, serve as test-beds for performance prediction. However, these generalized patterns do not offer real-life testing scenarios for every trip a vehicle might encounter during its life cycle. Thus, the “Journey Mapping” concept is highlighted in this paper, which redefines drive cycles more realistically as the journey of a vehicle from an origin to the destination is influenced by weather, terrain, traffic, driver behavior, road, and aerodynamic conditions. AMESim software simulations for a Ford Focus Electric 2012 were seen to predict energy consumption with about 5% error, on average, compared with the true vehicle values.