Towards Reducing Energy Waste through Usage of External Communication of Autonomous Vehicles

Automated vehicles can implement strategies to drive with optimized fuel efficiency. Therefore, automated driving is seen as a major advancement in tackling climate change. However, with automated vehicles driving in cities and other areas rife with other road users such as human drivers, pedestrians, or cyclists, there is the potential for “stop-and-go” traffic. This would greatly diminish the possibility of automated vehicles to drive fuel-efficient. We suggest using external communication of automated vehicles to aid in ecological driving by providing clues to other road users to show the intent and therefore ultimately enable smoother traffic.