Latest discussions in public as well as topics in technical conferences and publication show that the defined content is an enabler for fuel consumption reduction in future European Road Transport by a wide field of society. Therefore the project content and its further development and industrialization by the project partners will be a driver for fuel consumption reduction in long haul traffic.
USA, Canada, China, Japan already have CO2 regulations for Heavy Duty vehicles in place. In May 2017, as part of its first mobility package of the Europe on the Move series, the European Commission proposed regulation for the monitoring and reporting of CO2 emissions and fuel consumption of new heavy-duty vehicles.
Under the regulation, all relevant CO2 certification information produced by manufacturers, including vehicle and component data, would be monitored, reported and published at EU level. According to the proposal of CO2 reduction, the future standards should be based on the CO2 values as calculated using the VECTO simulation tool. From early 2019 version, VECTO will include generic CO2 reduction rates as they are covered by the IMPERIUM project such as engine stop/start during vehicle stops, eco-roll and predictive cruise control.
The IMPERIUM strategy to deliver project innovations to the market is built on the following pillars:
- Provide iterative refinement and maturation of the proposed technology: The work plan consists of several milestones representing maturity gates of the technology and enabling intermediate evaluation. This approach enables a focus on industry needs (represented by the use cases) and a successive refinement and maturation of the proposed technology according to the project targets and proposed use cases.
- Provide innovations in line with industry (value chain) expectations: The IMPERIUM consortium provides a complete value chain (distributed over the consortium partners). Project results provide the opportunity for the partners to identify the respective needs and support integration of the proposed technology into their core business.
- Provide innovations in line with and integrated into existing technology available in the market: The IMPERIUM consortium comprises technology and tool providers for key technologies. These partners reinforce the proposed technology with respect to feasibility and integrate the most promising results into their technology portfolio and commercial products.
The results from the IMPERIUM shows significant higher potential for CO2 reduction with the consideration of traffic. Intensive effort was taken to develop a simulation platform covering interactive traffic scenarios and enable a validation of eHorizon-based measures for fuel consumption reduction. Although these measures currently are not reflected in VECTO and don’t lead to representative CO2 reduction, the impact of this technology on European roads is given.
