Fast computing and approximate fuel consumption modeling for Internal Combustion Engine passenger cars

•We proposed a new fuel consumption model for Internal Combustion Engine passenger cars.•We designed it as an analytic and semi-empirical modeling for accurate and fast computing results.•We made experiments to compare this model to reality.•We selected and develop performance indicators for instantaneous and cumulated fuel use.•We evaluated and compared the model to literature models with these performance indicators. This article presents a fuel consumption model, SEFUM (Semi Empirical Fuel Use Modeling), and its comparison with three models from the literature on a 600km experimental database. This model is easy to calibrate with only a few required parameters that are provided by car manufacturers. The test database has been built from 21 drivers who drove in two conditions (normal and ecodriving) on a 15km trip. For the model evaluation, three indicators have been selected: instantaneous fuel use root mean square error, cumulated error and computation time in order to evaluate the accuracy both in cumulated and instantaneous fuel use and to estimate computation time of each model. Results tend to prove that the model is able to compute rapidly (maximum of 1500 simulated kilometers under Matlab) in comparison to all other models while ensuring a high accuracy and precision for cumulated and instantaneous fuel use.