Driver Efficiency and Software: Influence on Eco-Design

Designing eco-friendly products involves energy efficiency improvements. Eco-friendly products must consider not only raw materials and manufacturing processes to improve energy efficiency but also energy needed when designing them. This research shows how eco-routing (ER), eco-charging (EC), eco-driving (EDR), vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and electric vehicles (EVs) can contribute to the reduction of energy consumption during the product design. To do this, a group of 44 engineers assigned to the project was chosen to assess the total energy available for V2G when driving EVs from their homes to the design center by using ER, ED and, EC by running an application coded by the authors. The energy stored in EVs was used to quantify the reduction in energy consumption of the buildings present in the design center. The results show that energy saving ranges from 2.89% to 6.9% per day. In other words, 93 kWh per day during the design process. In addition, renewable energies (REs) are integrated better during the design process by making the design process greener. By running the application, drivers are informed about the RE mix when the charging process takes place. Finally, this research shows that current policies make V2G and vehicle-to-home techniques not compatible.