Measuring platooning performances of connected and automated vehicles in energy consumption, emission, and efficiency

Determining the most appropriate connected and automated vehicle (CAV) platoon among alternatives is difficult for the decision-makers while considering multiple conflicting criteria, especially under different spacing policies facing conflicting criteria. The study measures platooning performances of CAVs under different spacing policies, considering energy consumption, emission, and efficiency impacts to determine the ranking order of the alternatives for two distinct groups of decision-makers. A hybrid multi-criteria decision-making approach is developed by integrating three modeling methods and jointly using the simulated and linguistic variables data. An illustrative case is conducted for two alternative CAV platoons from the decision-maker perspectives of enterprise owners and administrators. The results indicate that the CAV platoons with the constant spacing (CS) and constant time gap (CTG) policies exhibit better platooning performance for the enterprise owners and administrators, respectively. Therefore, the proposed approach can effectively serve as a decision-making tool for decision-makers to determine the platooning strategies for CAVs.