Vehicle information providing device

• US 9,459,114 B2
• Filed: 05/31/2013
• Issued: 10/04/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 12/27/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.
• Inventors: Saito, Daisuke, Inoue, Hirofumi, Muramatsu, Toshiro
• Primary Examiner(s): Melton, Todd
• Assistant Examiner(s): ROBERSON, JASON R
• Application Number:
  US14/653,938
• Publication Number:
  US 20150345977A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,222 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 2240/62 Vehicle position
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 3/00 Electric devices on electrically-propelled vehicles for safety purposes; Monitoring operating variables, e.g. speed, deceleration or energy consumption methods or circuit arrangements for monitoring or controlling batteries or fuel cells B60L58/00
• CPC Class Codes: B60L 53/00 Methods of charging batteries, specially adapted for electric vehicles; Charging stations or on-board charging equipment therefor; Exchange of energy storage elements in electric vehicles
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3461 Preferred or disfavoured areas, e.g. dangerous zones, toll or emission zones, intersections, manoeuvre types, segments such as motorways, toll roads, ferries
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3469 Fuel consumption; Energy use; Emission aspects
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3484 Personalized, e.g. from learned user behaviour or user-defined profiles
• CPC Class Codes: G01C 21/3605 Destination input or retrieval
• CPC Class Codes: Y02T 10/70 Energy storage systems for electromobility, e.g. batteries
• CPC Class Codes: Y02T 10/7072 Electromobility specific charging systems or methods for batteries, ultracapacitors, supercapacitors or double-layer capacitors
• CPC Class Codes: Y02T 10/72 Electric energy management in electromobility
• CPC Class Codes: Y02T 90/14 Plug-in electric vehicles
• CPC Class Codes: Y02T 90/16 Information or communication technologies improving the operation of electric vehicles

Abstract

A vehicle information providing device provides route information to vehicles. The vehicle information providing device has a history information accumulation unit that sequentially acquires at least one of driving location information, power consumption information and charging location information from vehicle-mounted devices of a plurality of vehicle, and accumulates this as driving history information. A presentation route determination unit extracts driving location information from the history information accumulation unit, searches for a route that has been traveled from a departure point range to a destination point range from among the traveled routes, and determines the searched route as a presentation route. A presentation information determination unit extracts driving history information from the history information accumulation unit and determines one of power consumed while traveling and charging hubs passed when driving along the presentation route. A presentation information provision unit provides information regarding determination results.

Claims

1. A vehicle information providing device comprising:

a history information accumulation unit that acquires driving location information and at least one of power consumption information and charging location information from vehicle-mounted devices installed on a plurality of vehicles that each have an electric motor as a drive source, the history information accumulation unit accumulating the acquired information as driving history information, the driving location information including information regarding routes driven by the plurality of vehicles, the power consumption information including information regarding power consumed by the vehicles when driving the respective routes, and the charging location information including information regarding charging facilities traversed when driving the respective routes;

an input unit for inputting a departure point and a destination point for searching for a route;

a range setting unit that sets a departure point range and a destination point range, the departure point range being a prescribed geographic area including the departure point, and the destination point range being a prescribed geographic area including the destination point, a size of the departure point range and a size of the destination point range being variably set based on the departure point and the destination point inputted via the input unit;

a presentation route determination unit that accesses the driving history information accumulated by the history information accumulation unit and searches for at least one route that was driven from a point within the departure point range to a point within the destination point range by at least one vehicle among the plurality of vehicles, and determines the searched at least one route as at least one presentation route;

a presentation information determination unit that determines at least one of a power that will be consumed when driving the at least one presentation route and charging facilities that will be traversed when driving the at least one presentation route by referencing the driving history information accumulated in the history information accumulation unit; and

a presentation information provision unit that provides information regarding the at least one presentation route determined by the presentation route determination unit, the provided information including the at least one of the power consumption and the charging facilities determined by the presentation information determination unit.

2. The vehicle information providing device as recited in claim 1, wherein

the range setting unit sets at least one of the departure point range and the destination point range as a circular range having a predetermined radius around the departure point or the destination point.

3. The vehicle information providing device as recited in claim 1, wherein

the setting unit sets at least one of the departure point range and the destination point range as a range in which distances along each path among a plurality of paths following a plurality of different roads that start at the departure point or the destination point and end at a perimeter of the range will be a predetermined equal distance.

4. The vehicle information providing device as recited in claim 1, wherein

the range setting unit sets at least one of the departure point range and the destination point range to be defined by points that are within a predetermined distance range from the departure point or the destination point and within a predetermined altitude range in relation to the altitude of the departure point or the destination point.

5. The vehicle information providing device as recited in claim 1, wherein

when one of the departure point and the destination point input by the input unit is a specific facility, the range setting unit sets at least one of the departure point range and the destination point range as a range of the facility.

6. The vehicle information providing device as recited in claim 1, wherein

the range setting unit is configured such that

when at least one of the departure point and the destination point input by the input unit corresponds to a toll road or a facility attached to a toll road, the range setting unit sets a range that includes only ranges of toll roads and facilities attached to toll roads as the at least one of the departure point range and the destination point range, and

when one of the departure point and the destination point input by the input unit does not correspond to a toll road or a facility attached to a toll road, the range setting unit sets a range that excludes the ranges of toll roads and facilities attached to toll roads as the at least one of the departure point range and the destination point range.

7. The vehicle information providing device as recited in claim 1, wherein

the range setting unit

extracts information regarding travel start points and travel end points of the plurality of vehicles from the driving history information accumulated in the history information accumulation unit, and

determines the size of at least one of the departure point range and the destination point range according to a number of the travel start points and the travel end points that are located in a vicinity of the at least one of the departure point and the destination point input by the input unit.

8. The vehicle information providing device as recited in claim 1, wherein

the range setting unit determines the size of the departure point range and the size of the destination point range according to the distance between the departure point and the destination point input by the input unit.

9. The vehicle information providing device as recited in claim 1, wherein

the range setting unit determines the size of the departure point range and the size of the destination point range according to a time required to reach the destination point from the departure point input by the input unit.