A sustainable circular economy involves designing and promoting new products with the least environmental impact through increasing efficiency. The emergence of autonomous vehicles (AVs) has been a revolution in the automobile industry and a breakthrough opportunity to create more sustainable transportation in the future. Autonomous vehicles are supposed to provide a safe, easy-to-use and environmentally friendly means of transport. To this end, improving AVs’ safety and energy efficiency by using advanced control and optimization algorithms has become an active research topic to deliver on new commitments: carbon reduction and responsible innovation. The focus of this study is to improve the energy consumption of an AV in a vehicle-following process while safe driving is satisfied. We propose a cascade control system in which an autonomous cruise controller (ACC) is integrated with an energy management system (EMS) to reduce energy consumption. An adaptive model predictive control (AMPC) is proposed as the ACC to control the acceleration of the ego vehicle (the following vehicle) in a vehicle-following scenario, such that it can safely follow the lead vehicle in the same lane on a highway. The proposed ACC appropriately switches between speed and distance control systems to follow the lead vehicle safely and precisely. The computed acceleration is then used in the EMS component to find the optimal engine torque that minimizes the fuel consumption of the ego vehicle. EMS is designed based on two methods: type 1 fuzzy logic system (T1FLS) and interval type 2 fuzzy logic system (IT2FLS). Results show that the combination of AMPC and IT2FLS significantly reduces fuel consumption while the ego vehicle follows the lead vehicle safely and with a minimum spacing error. The proposed controller facilitates smarter energy use in AVs and supports safer transportation.

Automotive companies continue to develop integrated safety, sustainability, and reliability features that can help mitigate some of the most common driving risks associated with autonomous vehicles (AVs). Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) offer practical solutions to use control strategies to cut down fuel usage and emissions. AVs and HEVs are combined to take the advantages of each kind to solve the problem of wasting energy. This paper presents an intelligent driver assistance system, including adaptive cruise control (ACC) and an energy management system (EMS), for HEVs. Our proposed ACC determines the desired acceleration and safe distance with the lead car through a switched model predictive control (MPC) and a neuro-fuzzy (NF) system. The performance criteria of the switched MPC toggles between speed and distance control appropriately and its stability is mathematically proven. The EMS intelligently control the energy consumption based on ACC commands. The results show that the driving risk is extremely reduced by using ACC-MPC and ACC-NF, and the vehicle energy consumption by driver assistance system based on ACC-NF is improved by 2.6%.