HMI Design for Increasing Vehicle Energy Efficiency by Affecting Driving Habits 2013-01-0570

Wayne State University EcoCAR2 team is designing and modifying a GM-donated Chevrolet Malibu 2013 to a Parallel-Through-The-Road (PTTR) plug-in hybrid. A Freescale-donated Center Stack Unit (CSU) touchscreen display is used for Human Machine Interface (HMI). Surveys were conducted to better understand CSU functionality expectations. One required function was increasing driving efficiency.

Other hybrid and electric vehicles HMI systems present driving and environmental settings efficiencies such as average fuel economy, lifetime fuel economy, electric charge used, fuel used, distances driven on each power source, instantaneous power gauge and instantaneous driver efficiency gauge. These offer drivers a large sum of information but with no provision to analyze and improve one's driving habits unless one has the required knowledge to understand the causes behind the values presented. While all these will still be available, the team seeks to incorporate the latter by adopting a debrief method widely used in military, sports and gaming applications. For the less active customer the system offers only a small return on investment from slightly improved driving habits in the short term for hybrid vehicles. However, a more enthusiastic driver may choose to ask the system for more aggressive results and with the proper driver's cooperation see even a short term improvement.