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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Table of contents

1. What is the VECTO software and VECTO software platform?

The Vehicle Energy Consumption calculation TOol (VECTO) is a software developed by the European Commission for determining CO2 emissions and fuel consumption from the whole vehicle. VECTO was introduced in the European vehicle type-approval regulation in May 2017, as the official tool used in Europe to certify and monitor the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions from HDV. VECTO software platform consists of VECTO software and a series of other software tools developed for the needs of the HDV certification procedure. Those include VECTO Engine, VECTO AirDrag, and VECTO Hashing tools, which are used at various points during the certification process

2. What is the relation between VECTO and official CO2 certification methodology for HDVs?

VECTO is a key component of the European Heavy Duty Vehicle CO2 and fuel consumption certification methodology. The CO2 certification methodology is based on the measurement of the performance of different vehicle components contributing to the vehicle energy consumption (aerodynamic drag, torque losses in the drivetrain, fuel map of the engine, power demand of auxiliaries, tyre-rolling resistance, etc.). The results of these measurements are then used as input in VECTO in order to simulate vehicle operation over different driving conditions. A series of official driving cycles have been developed for the purpose.

3. Do I need a license file to run VECTO?

No. A license used to be required in the past, but this practice is no longer applicable.
This applies to all VECTO tools (VECTO, VECTO Multistep, VECTO Trailer, VECTO Engine, VECTO Airdrag, and VECTO Hashing).

4. How VECTO has been developed?

VECTO and the respective certification methodology were developed under a series of contracts launched by DG CLIMA. A summary of the main ones can be found here. The Commission’s JRC acts as scientific coordinator of the VECTO development and has performed a series of independent validations, the main results of which can be found here. Several stakeholders have contributed significantly in the development process by providing data, feedback, insight and by validating extensively VECTO and its sub-routines; those include heavy duty vehicle manufacturers, transmission manufacturers, tyre manufacturers, vehicle component suppliers, heavy duty vehicle body-builders and other industrial stakeholders. In addition, a series of non-industrial organizations have supported the development with feedback and validation exercises including European member states, research bodies and other organizations.

5. How I can get started with VECTO tool?

All the VECTO platform components contain demo files in order to start a simulation and see how the software operates. In addition, the software packages include user manuals that will help you understand the workflow for a successful VECTO simulation.

6. What programming language is used, what operating system is necessary to run VECTO?

The VECTO components are written in C# and delivered as executable files. The tools are portable applications, i.e., it is not necessary to run a setup procedure for installation. The executable file can be run from any place on a computer or in a network (Windows environment only).

7. What is the licensing scheme of VECTO?

VECTO is an open source software. All components of the VECTO platform are licensed under the EUPL v1.2.

8. Can we use VECTO platform components for commercial purposes and real tests with our

customers?

The VECTO tool is free to be used by anyone. Commercial companies or other organizations are free to use VECTO in their projects, including for commercial use. However, according to the EUPL, if VECTO (or parts of it) are embedded into a commercial application, this application has to be open-sourced as well and the application’s sources have to be provided together with the executable file.

9. Makros & ActiveX, which are necessary to run the program, excel somehow crashes

immediately.

You have to check the version of Microsoft Office. This has been reported Microsoft Excel 2007. Updating to a newer version (2010), solved the problem.

10. What are the main inputs for running a VECTO simulation?

The main vehicle characteristics in order to run a VECTO simulation are:

  1. Vehicle category (rigid truck, tractor);
  2. Axles configuration (i.e. 4x2, 4x4, 6x2 etc.);
  3. Gross vehicle mass rating (w/o trailer) [kg];
  4. Vehicle curb mass [kg];
  5. C d x A [m²];
  6. Tyre characteristics (rolling resistance coefficient [-], wheel dimensions etc.);
  7. Engine characteristics (full load curve, drag curve, fuel map, displacement etc.);
  8. Gearbox & Final Drive characteristics; and
  9. Auxiliary specifications (selection from a list of technologies).

11. What input data is needed to run the VECTO Engine tool?

VECTO Engine needs 4 separate input files (determined according to the current version of the technical annex):

  1. Fuel consumption map of CO2 -parent engine;
  2. Full-load curve of CO2 -parent engine;
  3. Full-load curve of engine to be certified;
  4. Motoring curve of CO2 -parent engine.

12. What inputs are needed to run the VECTO Airdrag tool?

Here is an overview of the input files:

  1. Vehicle: contains relevant information on the tested vehicle configuration (e.g. vehicle test mass, anemometer height).
  2. Ambient conditions: contains ambient conditions as measured by the stationary weather station.
  3. Configuration file for measurement sections: contains the configuration of the measurement sections (coordinates, driving directions etc.) on the test track. The measurement sections can be configured for the calibration run and the measurement runs separately.
  4. Measurement data: contains the measurement data recorded at the vehicle consolidated in 100 Hz.
  5. Altitude profile (optional): contains the altitude profile on the measurement sections. This data is used for the correction of traction force for gradient influence in the evaluation if the related feature is activated in the VECTO AirDrag GUI.
  6. Job: contains all information for a test evaluation (evaluation settings, paths to input data). The job file is automatically created if VECTO-AirDrag is operated via the user interface but can also be generated or edited e.g. by means of a text editor. After a successful calculation VECTO-AirDrag also writes the main evaluation results into the job-file.
  7. Criteria (optional): can be used to save or import a set of evaluation parameters (e.g. validity criteria or settings for correction functions). For reasons of traceability for each calculation the used parameters are in any case also stored in the Job-file.

13. How I can get access to the code?

The codebase from all the published VECTO releases is publicly available at the code.europa.eu platform. See the Wiki for more information.

14. What is the difference between declaration mode and engineering mode?

The declaration mode is the official simulation mode for declaring CO2 emissions of a vehicle. In declaration mode, several model parameters such as the payload, gearshift parameters, simulated mission profiles, etc. are generic. Moreover, in declaration mode the loss-maps and fuel-consumption maps as provided in the input data are not extrapolated. In the engineering mode, VECTO can be operated like any other vehicle simulation tool. All simulation parameters can be set and/or edited by the user.

15. Can I run VECTO Simulator in batch mode/from the command line?

This can be accomplished by using the command line version of VECTO: vectocmd.exe. This executable file comes with the normal VECTO package. Check the corresponding section of the manual:

  • Navigate to the User manual folder, the file is named help.html.
  • Open it with a browser and then look for the section Command Line Arguments.

16. How to cite VECTO?

For further information about the platform and support, please see https://code.europa.eu/info/about