  Platooning allows vehicles to travel with small intervehicle distance in a
coordinated fashion thanks to vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity. When applied at
a larger scale, platooning will create significant opportunities for energy
savings due to reduced aerodynamic drag, as well as increased road capacity and
congestion reduction resulting from shorter vehicle headways. However, these
potential savings are maximized if platooning-capable vehicles spend most of
their travel time within platoons. Ad hoc platoon formation may not ensure a
high rate of platoon driving. In this paper we consider the problem of central
coordination of platooning-capable vehicles. By coordinating their routes and
departure times, we can maximize the fuel savings afforded by platooning
vehicles. The resulting problem is a combinatorial optimization problem that
considers the platoon coordination and vehicle routing problems simultaneously.
We demonstrate our methodology by evaluating the benefits of a coordinated
solution and comparing it with the uncoordinated case when platoons form only
in an ad hoc manner. We compare the coordinated and uncoordinated scenarios on
a grid network with different assumptions about demand and the time vehicles
are willing to wait.
