Fog-based VANETs (Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks) is a new model with vehicular cloud and fog computing benefits. Fog-based VANETs consist of a series of mobile nodes that are fully dynamic without any central management. These networks have some limitations due to the use of the mobile power source. There are many challenges in extending mobilebased networks' life span. Many methods have been suggested to minimize the nodes' energy consumption and extend the network life. Also, some works have been developed for load-balanced routing. Still, energy-efficient routing and load balancing in VANETs are challenges. The purpose of this study is to present a suitable method based on energy awareness for load balancing in fog-based VANETs using a hybrid optimization algorithm (employing ant colony optimization and artificial bee colony (ACO-ABC)). The simulation results in the Network Simulator 2 (NS2) environment showed that as the number of nodes increased, the consumed amount of energy in the VANET is increased. Also, with the increasing number of tasks, load balancing by the proposed method has been improved. Finally, the simulation experiments showed that the proposed hybrid algorithm (ACO-ABC) outperforms all other algorithms.1 Recently, extending cloud computing to the network's edge is very hot topic, for example, deploying fog nodes to the network edge [4][5][6]. In other words, computational capabilities are pushed to devices located on the edge of the network based on the internet "decentralization" feature. It lets some services be decentralized from the cloud to the fog devices [7,8], reducing data transmission delay, bandwidth consumption, computa-This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.