Changes in air pollutant emissions from road vehicles due to autonomous driving technology: A conceptual modeling approach

Abstract

The autonomous vehicles (AVs) could make a positive or negative impact on reducing mobile emissions. This study investigated the changes of mobile emissions that could be caused by large-scale adoption of AVs. The factors of road capacity increase and speed limit increase impacts were simulated using a conceptual modeling approach that combines a hypothetical speed-emission function and a traffic demand model using a virtual transportation network. The simulation results show that road capacity increase impact is significant in decreasing mobile emissions until the market share of AVs is less than 80%. If the road capacity increases by 100%, the mobile emissions will decrease by about 30%. On the other hand, driving speed limit increase impact is significant in increasing mobile emissions, and the environmentally desirable speed limit was found at around 95 km/h. If the speed limit increases to 140 km/h, the mobile emissions will increase by about 25%. This is because some vehicles begin to bypass the congested routes at high speeds as speed limit increases. Based on the simulation results, it is clear that the vehicle platooning technology implemented at reasonable speed limit is one of the AV technologies that are encouraging from the environmental point of view.