What is Eco-driving
Is it the type of driving that saves the finances of your company? Contributes to nature protection? Or is it the driving mode fundamental to your customers, for example, to protect the environment and ensure that the cargo arrives undamaged and the transportation itself is cheaper? All these listed statements are correct, and, in general, eco-driving can be defined as a way of driving that lays on two primary principles – to drive safely and economically.
We notice that eco-driving is becoming relevant for car owners, companies of different sizes, and drivers of heavy machinery. However, companies with large fleets of HCVs pay the most attention to this. A year ago, Ruptela introduced the Eco-Drive product to the market, designed to improve driver skills and increase motivation, thus saving fuel costs and protecting vehicles from damage due to improper driving. We developed it together with cargoGo, Finėjas, and other logistics companies from Lithuania and European countries.
In this article, we invite you to delve deeper into why large logistics companies spend so much time and invest in this, where they see the benefits, and how you can successfully develop and implement an economic driving solution.
Cleaner Environment. Less CO2
On average, how much fuel a truck or other vehicle consumes depends on numerous factors – a year of production and its manufacturer, road, weight, etc. Still, the fuel consumption of a fully loaded truck can reach about 30l/100km of diesel when traveling on a route of moderate difficulty. Many specialists would say this is average, but our customers’ experience demonstrates that it can be otherwise. By driving economically, you can save about 2l/100km of diesel, equivalent to about 500g of CO2 not released into the environment.
Can you imagine our impact on nature by driving more economically? For the sake of interest, we calculated that a logistics company with 100 trucks could save about 650t of CO2 in just one year – the same amount of CO2 we would emit into nature if we circled the Earth 87 times in a passenger car!
Safety & Security
Discussions about a greener world are intensifying and are just as important to our partners and customers. Unfortunately, for carriers’ customers, this is often not the most critical factor when choosing a carrier and its services – it’s still overshadowed by the desire for the cargo to be delivered quickly (i.e., on the agreed time) and unharmed. Our system identifies drivers and shows how they drive the vehicle, whether they use the car’s intelligent control and safety systems, saving a lot of fuel. The system also records how the driver predicts his road ahead, including the vehicle’s acceleration and braking speeds. Based on the Eco-Drive data, continuous eco-driving training of drivers helps avoid traffic accidents, loss of finances, cargo damage and will ensure safety.
Benefits For a Vehicle Itself
Fuel isn’t the only cost to keep a car running. Other parts need to be replaced, repaired, and maintained due to improper operation of the vehicle, making the service visits closer. Aggressive accelerations and braking harm both the gearbox and the engine itself, not to mention squealing tires. All these forceful actions are recorded by the Eco-Drive system and are displayed when calculating the eco-driving score, so it is an auxiliary tool for saving car operating costs.
Massive Financial Savings
With more than 900 trucks, our partner, cargoGo, has dedicated its time and participated in the Eco-Drive testing and development activities in search of the best product. From the report below, we can clearly see that the effort pays off munificently – a cargoGo driver transporting a payload of 30 tonnes reaches a fuel consumption of 23.6l/100km, which is >20% less than the market average (about 30l/100km).