A Deep Learning Approach for Macroscopic Energy Consumption Prediction with Microscopic Quality for Electric Vehicles

This paper presents a machine learning approach to model the electric consumption of electric vehicles at macroscopic level, i.e., in the absence of a speed profile, while preserving microscopic level accuracy. For this work, we leveraged a high-performance, agent-based transportation tool to model trips that occur in the Greater Chicago region under various scenario changes, along with physics-based modeling and simulation tools to provide high-fidelity energy consumption values. The generated results constitute a very large dataset of vehicle-route energy outcomes that capture variability in vehicle and routing setting, and in which high-fidelity time series of vehicle speed dynamics is masked. We show that although all internal dynamics that affect energy consumption are masked, it is possible to learn aggregate-level energy consumption values quite accurately with a deep learning approach. When large-scale data is available, and with carefully tailored feature engineering, a well-designed model can overcome and retrieve latent information. This model has been deployed and integrated within POLARIS Transportation System Simulation Tool to support real-time behavioral transportation models for individual charging decision-making, and rerouting of electric vehicles.

A Real-Time Energy and Cost Efficient Vehicle Route Assignment Neural Recommender System

This paper presents a neural network recommender system algorithm for assigning vehicles to routes based on energy and cost criteria. In this work, we applied this new approach to efficiently identify the most cost-effective medium and heavy duty truck (MDHDT) powertrain technology, from a total cost of ownership (TCO) perspective, for given trips. We employ a machine learning based approach to efficiently estimate the energy consumption of various candidate vehicles over given routes, defined as sequences of links (road segments), with little information known about internal dynamics, i.e using high level macroscopic route information. A complete recommendation logic is then developed to allow for real-time optimum assignment for each route, subject to the operational constraints of the fleet. We show how this framework can be used to (1) efficiently provide a single trip recommendation with a top-$k$ vehicles star ranking system, and (2) engage in more general assignment problems where $n$ vehicles need to be deployed over $m \leq n$ trips. This new assignment system has been deployed and integrated into the POLARIS Transportation System Simulation Tool for use in research conducted by the Department of Energy's Systems and Modeling for Accelerated Research in Transportation (SMART) Mobility Consortium

Explainable AI for a No-Teardown Vehicle Component Cost Estimation: A Top-Down Approach

The broader ambition of this article is to popularize an approach for the fair distribution of the quantity of a system's output to its subsystems, while allowing for underlying complex subsystem level interactions. Particularly, we present a data-driven approach to vehicle price modeling and its component price estimation by leveraging a combination of concepts from machine learning and game theory. We show an alternative to common teardown methodologies and surveying approaches for component and vehicle price estimation at the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) level that has the advantage of bypassing the uncertainties involved in 1) the gathering of teardown data, 2) the need to perform expensive and biased surveying, and 3) the need to perform retail price equivalent (RPE) or indirect cost multiplier (ICM) adjustments to mark up direct manufacturing costs to MSRP. This novel exercise not only provides accurate pricing of the technologies at the customer level, but also shows the, a priori known, large gaps in pricing strategies between manufacturers, vehicle sizes, classes, market segments, and other factors. There is also clear synergism or interaction between the price of certain technologies and other specifications present in the same vehicle. Those (unsurprising) results are indication that old methods of manufacturer-level component costing, aggregation, and the application of a flat and rigid RPE or ICM adjustment factor should be carefully examined. The findings are based on an extensive database, developed by Argonne National Laboratory, that includes more than 64,000 vehicles covering MY1990 to MY2020 over hundreds of vehicle specs.