F2010E052
EcoDrive: Driver Behaviour Evaluation System to Reduce CO2 Emissions
Increasing public awareness on environment deterioration due to climate change and upcoming worldwide legislation on CO2 emissions of Passenger Cars and Commercial Vehicles are pushing OEM and Suppliers to improve global vehicle efficiency introducing sophisticated and expensive systems and components.
Unfortunately even the most efficient vehicle will produce huge quantities of CO2 if it is used by "aggressive drivers" and/or in unfavourable traffic conditions For this reason, measures or technologies that influence the driver behavior and inform the driver on the most efficient route are able to deliver considerable improvements in fuel consumption/CO2 emissions.
In this respect improved navigation systems (eco-navigation), systems enabling vehicles to communicate with other vehicles and/or dedicated infrastructures as well as system suggesting the most effective way of driving (EcoDriving) will very likely play a significant role in the next future due to a favorable cost benefit ratio.
Fiat introduced a eco-technology called eco:Drive(TM) in vehicles to encourage environmentally aware driver behavior Fiat eco:Drive(TM) is a driver behaviour measurement technology developed by Fiat Group Automobiles now available on many Fiat models. Fiat eco:Drive(TM) allows customers to collect telemetric driving data from their vehicles, that through a personal computer application is analyzed by Fiat Group Automobiles (FGA) algorithms in order to give personalized feedback on how to change driving style to achieve maximum fuel efficiency from the vehicle. Following eco:Drive(TM) advice, the customer is able to quantify the improvements on fuel consumption and CO2 emissions that derive from a change of driving style.
The paper outlines the main parameters considered to evaluate customer driving behaviour by analyzing four driving behaviour categories; Gear usage, acceleration (accelerator pedal usage), deceleration (brake pedal usage and engine fuel cut-off mode), speed pattern Over 1.5 million time histories related to "real life" customer journeys are currently recorded in FIAT web server allowing extensive statistical analyses of journey duration, length, average speed, average rpm, stop time and many other parameters. This enables to monitor how customers use the vehicles in real life thus allowing to verify internal test procedures or suggesting their modifications
Real life fuel consumption and consequent CO2 emissions can be tracked for selected users in order to identify the savings deriving from eco:Drive software suggestions.
This abstract is supplemented by a PDF, which can be viewed here.
Session: Intelligent Transportation Systems