I am trying to emulate acceleration and deceleration in Unity.
I have written to code to generate a track in Unity and place an object at a specific location on the trac
You could try work with the wheelcollider tutorial they have for their wheel system.
It has some variables you can adjust along with the Rigidbody variables to achieve simulated driving.
As they write
You can have up to 20 wheels on a single vehicle instance, with each of them applying steering, motor or braking torque.
Disclaimer: I have only minimal experience working with WheelColliders. But they seem like what you're looking for to me.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/WheelColliderTutorial.html