Development of a real-world urban drive cycle for Aizawl (India) using OBD data and micro-trip analysis

A drive cycle is a standardized testing procedure used to simulate real-world driving conditions in order to evaluate vehicle performance, fuel consumption, and emissions. Due to diverse traffic patterns, road geometries, and topographies, each city requires a unique drive cycle. Aizawl, the capital city of Mizoram in Northeast India, is characterized by winding roads and significant elevation changes, making its driving conditions distinct. In this study, a city-specific drive cycle for Aizawl is developed using real-world driving data collected via an On-Board Diagnostics (OBD) scanner across multiple routes during peak and off-peak traffic hours. The data is segmented into micro-trips and analyzed using performance value (PV) metrics and sum of squared differences (SSD) to identify the best representative cycle where the candidate drive cycle is shown is have SSD value of 1.372 and PV value of 99.781%. A total of 20 trips for a total of 6 h with 81 km distance is traveled and a total of 82 microtrips are recorded. After segmentation, six representative microtrips were extracted and characterized using eight statistical features. The selected drive cycle is then compared with drive cycles from other cities and standard drive cycles. Results show that Aizawl’s cycle features a lower average speed and a wide range of acceleration and deceleration rates, reflecting its hilly terrain and frequent stop-and-go driving behavior. This customized cycle provides a valuable benchmark for vehicle testing and optimization in regions with similar geographical features.