Predicting energy consumption of zero emission buses using route feature selection methods

This paper reports new insights into how the selection of route based characteristic parameters can influence the predicted energy consumption for next generation battery electric buses. 24 characteristic parameters have been studied to understand their relative importance on vehicle energy consumption and to develop new data-driven prediction models. The parameters are grouped into two scenarios, representative of the varying levels of route information available to a typical bus operator. A combination of feature selection methods was used to determine which characteristic parameters had the greatest influence on energy consumption. Regression based prediction models were developed, and models were then validated using standard and real vehicle drive cycles. The prediction models had a mean absolute percentage difference of 2.10–10.67%. This paper presents a novel methodology to estimate energy consumption of operating zero emission vehicles, which will support public transport operators, policy makers and energy suppliers in the decarbonisation of public transport.