Smart infrastructure for carbon foot print analysis of electric vehicles

Electric powered vehicles use energy stored in some form of battery for the vehicle propulsion drive and to power auxiliary instruments such as air conditioning, stereo and in car equipments. Many research initiatives are currently underway to evaluate the potential and performance of electric cars and to identify any barriers to their uptake (being, technical, economic or social) as a greener alternative to the internal combustion engine traditionally powered by fossil fuels. This study provides an early insight into research undertaken by Newcastle University to investigate the performance of electric vehicles through on-road testing, user led trials and the analysis of the data collected from the vehicle. Newcastle University is currently involved in creating a smart ITS infrastructure to analyse the electric vehicle performance by monitoring the vehicles in terms of the power consumed, distance traveled, trip profile, auxiliary loads and driving styles to determine how the battery discharges and recharges under different conditions, By measuring the energy usage on any particular journey the equivalent carbon footprint for the journey can be estimated from the prevailing CO2 per KWh assuming the mean electricity generation profile in the UK. This paper will discuss the results from electric vehicle monitoring infrastructure by analysing the energy regeneration and energy usage, thereby calculating the impact to the environment.