Virtual Test Drive
The Virtual Test Drive, helps you decide which electrified vehicle is right for you. We track the way you drive with your phone, then simulate how various electrified vehicles would perform driving the same route the same way. Once you download our app, it runs in the background, only logging data when you're in a vehicle. You never have to remember to turn it on and off.
Should you be anxious about the battery range? How much money and carbon will you save?
We also aggregate data from many users to help system planners prepare their community’s infrastructure to make the transition to electric transportation as smooth as possible (all while protecting users’ privacy, of course!).
How does it work? Think Nike+, but for driving.
When you visit your Virtual Test Drive on the web, you first see your routes. Then click on any car in our Virtual Show Room to see how different advanced, electrified vehicles' rhythms match your driving rhythms.
Drivers see fuel and greenhouse gas estimates. The queries take the form of a make, model, annual mileage, year, and home state information sent to VV Comparator's RESTful web interface.
VV Comparator returns estimates of annual fuel cost and greenhouse gas emissions (measured as CO2) for the queried vehicles based on the selected state in the US and on the annual mileage. The returned responses enable a calculation and presentation of how much money a driver can expect to spend on fuel, and the annual impact on their carbon footprint.
This graph shows a cost comparison between one day's drive between a user's current vehicle (a crossover utility vehicle), a Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, and Toyota HEV Prius.
When the principles of the Virtual Test Drive are applied in a community setting, VVCo can create powerful analytics to support planning, infrastructure and management of electrified vehicles.
VVCo uses crowd-sourced Virtual Test Drive data from multiple drivers who live in a community. We scrub the data of personally identifiable information (including precise home/work locations) and aggregate the data to predict when and where charging is likely to occur, and the routes that charging infrastructure users follow throughout the day.
The image shows one example of such an analysis. For more information about how communities can prepare for electrified vehicles, check out Project Get Ready.