Comparative analysis of the fuel consumption of vehicles equipped with various types of automatic transmissions

The growing number of vehicles moving on Polish roads equipped with various types of automatic transmissions prompted the authors of this publication to carry out research to assess the impact of the use of this type of transmission on the fuel consumption of these vehicles. The presented article presents a comparative analysis of the fuel consumption of vehicles of different manufacturers equipped with automatic transmissions moving in specially prepared driving cycles for research purposes. In the developed driving cycle, the vehicle speed was gradually increased every 10 km/h, maintaining each speed for a period of at least 30 seconds in order to stabilize the measurement results. The tests were carried out for various load stages of the drive system. Load differentiation was made by simulating driving in the prepared cycle for simulated different slopes of the road. The tests were carried out on the MAHA MSR500 chassis dynamometer, and the obtained results for the vehicle moving in automatic mode, where the transmission controller selected the gear ratio according to the programmed algorithm, were compared with the vehicle's fuel consumption for the vehicle gear selected by the driver in the driving cycle. The control software used to test the chassis dynamometer allows taking into account the increasing resistance of traffic along with the increase of vehicle speed, which greatly approximates the simulated conditions in the laboratory to the conditions on the road. The main purpose of this publication is to check whether using automatic transmissions or other control algorithm of these gears can achieve a reduction in fuel consumption.