The increasing shift towards battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in urban environments raises the question of how real-world traffic conditions affect their energy consumption. While BEVs are expected to reduce local emissions, their total energy demand, particularly in city traffic with with low average speeds, and therefore a higher impact of secondary consumption, remains insufficiently understood. To address this, a simulative framework to analyze the average energy consumption of an all-electric vehicle fleet in a mid-sized city, using Darmstadt, Germany, as a case study, is presented. A validated microscopic traffic simulation is built based on 2024 data and enriched with representative powertrain models for various vehicle classes, including passenger cars, trucks, and buses. The simulation allows the assessment of consumption under different traffic densities and speeds, revealing the substantial influence of secondary consumers and traffic flow on total energy demand. Furthermore, the study compares the CO2 emissions of an all-BEV fleet with those of a fully combustion-based fleet. The findings aim to highlight the role of secondary consumers in urban traffic and to identify the potential for energy-saving.
Heckelmann et al. (Fri,) studied this question.