A driving cycle for electrically-driven vehicles in Rome

In the research results presented here, an average driving cycle is synthesized for an electrically driven car moving in the city of Rome. The technique of Lyons et al. for synthesizing a statistically representative driving cycle was used on a 5 week acquisition set of data collected with a duly equipped electric Citroen Saxo that was driven for over 3100 km by six different drivers in the months of May and June 2001 in Rome. The driving cycle developed is compared with the other available cycles, especially the European ones. The comparison highlights the need for this new dedicated cycle to represent the driving conditions of electric cars in Rome, with a lower value of the acceleration-speed product on account of the limited power of the electric vehicle, frequent changes in the acceleration sign, typical of the traffic in a big city, and a very high maximum speed, typical of the driving behaviour of the inhabitants of Rome.