Comparative Evaluation of Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil and Conventional Diesel Using Operational Data from Heavy-Duty Trucks

Hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) is considered a promising drop-in alternative to conventional diesel fuel for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in road freight transport. However, empirical evidence on its performance under real-world operating conditions remains limited. This is particularly true for complex logistics systems such as agricultural transport. This study assesses the effect of neat HVO (HVO100) on fuel consumption using high-resolution vehicle operational data collected from three heavy-duty trucks during a full-scale sugar beet logistics campaign in Germany. Vehicle operation was recorded via a manufacturer-independent fleet management system interface and combined with satellite-based positioning data for route reconstruction. After data preprocessing and quality filtering, a total of 3353 valid transport tours were analyzed. Fuel consumption values during HVO100 operation were corrected for density-related measurement bias. The effect of fuel type was evaluated using a linear mixed-effects model. The model accounted for load status, route topography, driving speed, and their interactions. In addition, stratified pairwise comparisons were conducted across operational conditions. The results show that, in the full three-vehicle model, HVO100 was associated with a statistically significant increase in fuel consumption of 0.51 L/100 km under baseline conditions with an empty vehicle, low topographic variability, and medium driving speed, corresponding to approximately 2.3%. In a sensitivity analysis excluding the diesel-only truck, the estimated difference decreased to 0.34 L/100 km and was no longer statistically significant. Load status and topography were identified as the dominant drivers of fuel consumption with substantially larger effects than fuel choice. Overall, the findings indicate that the effect of HVO100 on fuel consumption is small relative to operational variability. Under many real-world operating conditions, operational factors outweighed the differences attributable to fuel type. These findings indicate that switching to HVO100 did not result in a substantial volumetric fuel-consumption penalty in the investigated agricultural logistics system.