Evaluating the impact of advanced vehicle and fuel technologies in U.S. light duty vehicle fleet

The unrelenting increase in oil use by the U.S. light-duty vehicle (LDV) fleet presents an extremely challenging energy and environmental problem. A variety of propulsion technologies and fuels have the promise to reduce petroleum use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from motor vehicles. Previous work in this domain has compared individual vehicle or fuel alternatives. The aim of this research was to deepen the understanding of the likely scale and timing of the fleet-wide impact of emerging technologies. A model of the light-duty vehicle fleet showed that fuel consumption of mainstream gasoline internal combustion engine (ICE) technology vehicles will determine the trajectory of fleet fuel use and GHG emissions over the next two decades. Using vehicle simulations and historical data, the trade-off between vehicle performance, size and fuel consumption was quantified. It was shown that up to 26 percent reduction in future LDV fuel use is possible with mainstream gasoline ICE vehicles alone if emphasis of vehicle technology is on reducing fuel consumption rather than improving performance. Addressing this vehicle performance-size-fuel consumption trade-off should be the priority for policymakers. By considering both supply and demand side constraints on building up vehicle production rates, three plausible scenarios of advanced vehicle market penetration were developed. Due to strong competition from mainstream gasoline vehicles and high initial cost, market penetration rates of diesels and gasoline hybrids in the U.S. are likely to be slow. As a result, diesels and gasoline hybrids have only a modest, though growing potential for reducing fleet fuel use before 2025. In general, the time-scales to impact of new technologies are twenty to twenty-five years.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Bandivadekar, Anup P

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John B. Heywood.

• Technology, Management, and Policy Program.
• Engineering Systems Division.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/43856

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/43856