Fuel consumption and emission performance from light-duty conventional/hybrid-electric vehicles over different cycles and real driving tests

Abstract

Many studies have found that WLTC (The Worldwide harmonized Light vehicles Test Cycles) doesn’t accord well to real driving in different regions and it’s necessary to develop local test cycles. China announced its local test cycle in 2019: CLTC (China light-duty vehicle test cycle). To evaluate vehicle emission under different cycles, one conventional gasoline vehicle and its hybrid counterpart were tested on the chassis dynamometer following CLTC, WLTC, and RDE (Real Driving Emission). The fuel consumption between WLTC and RDE is at the same level. While for the conventional, CLTC fuel consumption is 8.41% higher than WLTC and for the hybrid, it’s 20.23% lower than WLTC. To get better vehicle fuel efficiency, vehicle application scenarios must be considered. Frequent re-start and longer warm-up time of the hybrid leads to high CO emission than the conventional. High engine speed could result in instantaneous CO spikes and with these spikes, 25% of the total CO could be emitted in less than 10 s. For the conventional, NOx emitted during engine warm-up occupied 85.39%, 87.02%, 43.06%, 31.98%, and 55.43% of the total NOx respectively for CLTC, WLTC and three RDE tests. NOx emitted from the hybrid is less than 10% of the conventional due to lower engine load and less fuel enrichment. Hybrid particle emission is under good control with the equipment of the gasoline particle filter, but the regeneration might increase thin particle exposure to the public. For most pollutants, CLTC doesn't close the gap between laboratory tests and real driving.