Experimental Approximation of a Vehicle’s Fuel Consumption Using Smartphone Data

An algorithm is developed in order to record a vehicle’s fuel consumption using data from a smartphone’s sensors. Six field tests were conducted: (1) Ford Fiesta car with automatic transmission driven around Coventry, UK, with “passive” and “restless” driving behaviors, (2) Ford Fiesta car with manual transmission under heavy traffic driven around Athens, Greece, (3) Ford Fiesta car with manual transmission driven around Athens, Greece, in heavy traffic, in a highway, with “passive” and “restless” driving behaviors and high variation in altitude during the trip, (4) Ford Fiesta car with manual transmission driven around Athens, Greece, with “passive” and “restless” driving behaviors and even higher variation in altitude during the trip, (5) Suzuki Swift car with manual transmission, a route including highway, streets and alleys, in the west Attica in the surrounding area of the capital of Greece, and (6) Suzuki Swift car with manual transmission, with “passive”, “normal” and “restless” driving behaviors in West Attica, in a place with a small hill with a very high slope that we “climbed” three times in a row. The results show that the proposed algorithm improves the smartphone-recorded GPS data so that they show high accuracy when compared to the GPS data extracted from each vehicle’s on-board diagnostic system.