add Vehicles.txt

[BTollison]

In an effort to make ODS more compatible with electric fleets, I am proposing the following addition of Vehicles.txt

Vehicle_type_id
Used to identify a specific vehicle type within a fleet.

• Required (Primary Key)

vehicle_long_name
For the purpose of describing a vehicle type in length

• Example: Where vehicle_type_id could be 1234, a vehicle_description could say "Noord-Holland 10 meter VDL Citea Electric"

vehicle_short_name
For the purpose of briefly describing a vehicle.

• Example: vehicle_type_id ias 1234, and vehicle_short_name is "H10e."

useable_kwh
Described the amount of useable battery capacity. This should not be the total capacity of the battery as stated by a manufacture, but rather the total allowed consumable and rechargeable kwh. This is a decimal value.

• Example: A manufacture states that your battery is 200kwh total, but that you may only use 80% of that value. Then you are left with 160.00.
• Example 2: Your total battery capacity has degraded from 200kwh to 180kwh, but you are still only allowed to use 80%. Then your useable_kwh should be 144.00.
• This is the primary field for any energy consumption calculation.

total_kwh
This represents the full size of the battery as decimal value. It should change over time as batteries degrade.

charge_curve_id
Reference to the proposed charge_curves.txt. Connects the appropriate charging curve to the vehicle_type_id.

min_kwh
Minimum kwh allowed to remain in the battery while the vehicle is in operation.

• Used to set a bottom threshold of acceptable battery charge level

[hodb]

Adding to the vehicles.txt file concept, additional attributes that relate to the vehicle itself (non-EV related) such as -

• make
• model
• license_plate

These attributes can assist in maintaining fleet information to be consumed by the AVL provider

[skyqrose]

Which of these fields would be used to match what's in VehicleDescriptor in GTFS-RT?

[BTollison]

The intention of this is actually not to be a database of individual vehicles, but of groups of vehicle types so that up and downstream systems have the information necessary to understand the EV context. I admit the "vehicles.txt" name is a bit misleading in this way.

[hodb]

It could be it can be separated into two separated files, connected by a foreign key. My intention was to have communication between the dispatching software and the AVL provider regarding what vehicles are being operated

[BTollison]

For sure my intention is that in the future I would like a real-time component of ODS to be created that would expand on GTFS-RT. Right now this proposal though is focused on EV's (and some more proposals to come).

[safrazier17]

I propose:

• Naming this vehicle_categories.txt as it covers substantially the same material as the file from the proposed GTFS vehicles extension. This also avoids the confusion that vehicles.txt sounds as though it were going to provide individual vehicle data for the fleet
• Rename vehicle_type_id to vehicle_category_id
• Adding vehicle_category_name and fuel_type from the same proposal

Edit: the fuel_type field was proposed as an enum with the following values

0 or empty - Unknown
1 - Gasoline
2 - Diesel
3 - Natural gas
4 - Diesel-electric hybrid
5 - Natural gas hybrid
6 - Battery electric
7 - Fuel cell
8 - Hydrogen

[skyqrose]

Re: Fuel types:

• What's the difference between 7 - Fuel Cell and 8 - Hydrogen?
• Does there need to be a distinction between electric trolley buses that are capable of in motion charging via trolley poles, vs battery-only buses that need to sit at a charger?

[safrazier17]

@skyqrose I think there are non-hydrogen fuel cells that could be represented there, although they are certainly a minority... and for our purposes, there may be no particular advantage to separating (8) hydrogen out from (7) fuel cell. I'd be fine with dropping it

[BTollison]

We think it would be good to add trolley bus, but we consider trolley bus with a battery to be just an electric bus that can charge while driving. So we don't feel an addition of this is necessary.

[skyqrose]

I know this proposal is mostly about battery buses rather than trains, but if representing trains in this file, will this file list the types of cars or the types of trainsets.