The second day of the eCoMove final event started with a morning session dedicated to the driver.
Joakim Gudmunsen (Go Green) explained the training strategies needed to look at how to motivate the driver to make a driving behaviour change possible. Eco-driving is a not a new technique, it has been there for 15 years and it is influenced by 3 factors: human, organisational, and cultural.
The final goal for truck companies should be to have a long term strategy which can produce effective results over a long period of time. Nevertheless the approach used so far has to change into a bottom-up model starting from the human factor. Drivers need to understand the aim of the project and of the training before the training starts. The motivation of the driver is fundamental in the success of training and, on a long term run, to achieve fuel savings.
Florian Krietsch (PTV group) focused on the eCoMove applications on freight and logistics (included in the sub-project 4). There are some challenges and limitations for the mobility of heavy vehicles and trucks in urban areas. These challenges are based for instance on restrictions to access certain areas or unpredictable events such as congestion and incidents on the route. To address these issues, eCoMove has adopted an integrated approach by combining several applications and which includes a communication between the vehicle and the traffic management centre. It is indeed the centre that assesses the planned trip and according to specific criteria gives the green light or not to the truck.
In the same presentation, Stephane Dreher (HERE) illustrated the ecoNavigation application which consists in finding the most efficient fuel/CO2 emission route. The aim is to minimise the fuel consumption by calculating type of vehicles and driver behaviour.
Luisa Andreone (CRF) highlighted that the devices and services capable of giving information about driving and fuel consumption are already on the market but in the near future this data will have to be combined with information coming from the surrounding infrastructure.
eCoMove created several applications and tested them on drivers; although studies on drivers were carried out for a short period of time, the feedback received was very positive. In addition to this, the results showed a significant fuel saving figure down from 5% to 15% depending on the driving context.
Guillaume Vernet (Volvo Group) focused on the applications for trucks and on the specific application ecoDriverCoaching, an in-vehicle system that provides real-time advice to the driver. The communication between the vehicle and the traffic management centre also here is fundamental. The interesting part of this particular application is the possibility for the driver to review their performance (in the post-trip phase) and see concretely how much fuel they saved. This is another way to stimulate and motivate drivers, a point that come out as very important throughout all the presentations of this first morning session.
