Project Summary
Since the California Air Resources Board‟s legislation of Low Emission Vehicle (LEV) and Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandates has been adopted in 1990, there have been positive expectations of Alternative Fuel Vehicles (AFVs) adaptation. Recently, concerns about rising gasoline cost, technical feasibility of the “green” AFVs, and the success of the Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) in the automobile market, achieving sustainable transportation system has never seemed more promising. Many recent assessments on energy and emission of AFVs suggested positive outcomes. Two major advantages of the AFVs are significant reductions in energy use and emission because the conventional Internal Combustion Vehicles (ICVs) run on gasoline which is accountable for massive greenhouse gas emissions and non-renewable energy dependency.
However, the assessments are limited to aggregated analysis, scenario-based trend analysis, or survey of hypothetical conditions. This is due to lack of sufficient data on how consumers’ or drivers’ behavior towards the AFVs with their technical characteristics such as range and limited access to required infrastructures (i.e. refuel/recharge). As a result, it excludes an important aspect of the possible AFV adaptations that depending on the drivers‟ response to infrastructure investments, the environmental and energy effects will differ significantly.
To incorporate drivers’ behaviors, this dissertation proposes an activity-based travel demand, patterns, and infrastructure analysis. In addition, activity-based disaggregated approach analysis provides temporal and spatial profiles of energy uses and emissions. From this analysis, it is expected to assess bounds of the AFVs with different levels and strategies of infrastructure penetration. Furthermore, new infrastructure location strategies will be developed incorporating each vehicle patterns.