Artificial Intelligence Revolutionizes Mileage Estimation in the Automotive Industry

In 2023, Switzerland had over 6.6 million registered vehicles, including more than 4.7 million passenger cars. Accurate measurement of the performance of these vehicles is crucial for calculating CO2 emissions.

A recent study by ZHAW in collaboration with Empa highlights significant discrepancies between actual performance and values obtained using conventional methods. The project leaders introduce an innovative AI-based measurement method to enhance the accuracy of CO2 emission models.

New Innovative AI Technique for Assessing Average Vehicle Evaluation

The mileage of a vehicle is the sum of the distance traveled within a defined period of time. This parameter is particularly essential for quantifying the strain on infrastructure and the environmental impact of traffic. In their work, Dr. Naghmeh Niroomand from the ZHAW School of Management and Law and Christian Bach from Empa are changing the traditional approach to estimating vehicle mileage by using artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning techniques. By employing the innovative method, the researchers were able to classify the passenger cars and thus enable a more precise assessment of the average vehicle mileage. The new method is presented in the paper “Estimating Average Vehicle Mileage for Various Vehicle Classes using Polynomial Models in Deep Classifiers”(PDF 2,8 MB).

The Use of AI Provides More Precise Results

The increasing electrification of road transport poses a challenge when assessing CO2 emissions. “While road traffic has traditionally operated within its energy system, which made assessing CO2 emissions relatively straightforward, the increasing electrification of road traffic poses challenges in distinguishing energy consumption between road traffic and other stationary energy uses” explains Niroomand, who is responsible for the project. In the past, it was easy to determine CO2 emissions from cars because they could be estimated based on fuel consumption or distance traveled. In the area of electrification, this is more complex because the electricity distributed via the power grid is used for many other things in addition to charging an electric car. “Given the global trend to-wards electric vehicles, the accurate estimation of mileage and emissions models is more important than ever. Our AI driven approach not only provides a precise mathematical model to estimate the average mileage of vehicles, but also lays the foundation for informed decisions in sustainability initiatives,” says Niroomand.

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