Intelligent Electric Drive Management for Plug-in Hybrid Buses

Plug-in hybrid (PH) buses offer range and operating flexibility of buses with conventional internal combustion engines with environmental. However, when they are frequently charged, they also enable societal benefits (emissions- and noise-related) associated with electric buses. Thanks to geofencing, pure electric drive of PH buses can be assigned to specific locations via a back-office system. As a result, PH buses not only can fulfil zero-emission (ZE) zones set by city authorities, but they can also minimize total energy use thanks to selection of locations favouring (from energy perspective) electric drive. Such a location-controlled behaviour allows executing targeted air quality improvement and noise reduction strategies as well reducing energy consumption. However, current ZE zone assignment strategies used by PH buses are static-they are based on the first-come-first serve rule and do not consider traffic conditions. In this article, we propose a novel recommendation system, based on artificial intelligence, that allows PH buses operating efficiently in a dynamic environment, making the best use of the available resources so that emission- and noise-pollution levels are minimized.