A Canadian app developer has conducted thousands of test drives with the all-electric Nissan Leaf to examine the influence of cold temperatures on the range. No doubt, cold temperatures have a measurable negative effect on the range of an electric vehicle. More surprising however is the effect of the driving style on battery range. While the average range during the test rides at 0° C was 102 km, the best driver achieved astonishing 170 km – definitely another proof for the importance of eco-driving in clean, electric vehicles. Here you can find detailed information on the rest rides and results .Sources: www.fleetcarma.com, www.electrive.net.[more]

Obviously safe eco-driving is not only an important when driving clean vehicles, but also for conventionally fuelled buses in public transport. Also, safe eco-driving has more to it than saving energy or fuel – it also about safety. Salvatore Vancardo, an active bus driver of Duisburg’s public transport operator DVG (Duisburger Verkehrsgesellschaft AG), has proven he is among the best drivers in Germany when it comes to handling a huge bus. He has won the first place at the National Championships in road-safety training, which took place in Duisburg and was organised by the association of professional drivers in Germany (BDBK- Bund Deutscher Berufs-Kraftfahrer) together with their associated umbrella organisation BdBV. By winning the national championship Vancardo is automatically qualified for the World Championships 2014 in Poland.In five categories more than 100 bus drivers completed two different obstacle courses. The challenges resembled situations professional bus drivers are facing in their daily routine. David Karpathy, Chief Human Resources Officer at DVG, of encourages his drivers to apply safe driving features in their daily work: “We are very happy that our drivers...[more]

Bottrop’s municipal waste management and city cleaning company (BEST) is now using a driver assistance system in 42 vehicles now. The systems alerts the driver if fuel consumption rises above a predetermined threshold. Thereby BEST not only intends to significantly cut down fuel consumption but also to make a positive contribution to the protection of the environment. Once the systems are installed and running they will save some thousand liters of diesel each year. With the support of the electronic system BEST drivers are expected to adopt a driving style that optimizes fuel consumption and tear and wear of the vehicle 42 vehicles will be equipped with the new driver assistance system, which constitute about 60 percent of BEST’s fleet of garbage collection trucks. “We won’t equip all of vehicles with the new assistance system since some of our vehicles are just too old. Equipping them with this new technology just does not make sense”, says BEST board member Uwe Wolters. Positive contribution environmental protectionBEST expects to recoup the investment costs for the electronic driver assistance system in just one year. A six month test run has already produced promising...[more]

Driver Advisory Systems (DAS) are shortterm solution to reduce fuel consumption of diesel-hauled trains. The system "InLine-FAS" was successfully tested on the regional network of Veolia Sachsen-Anhalt GmbH. The articles describes the data requirements for such a test and the operational setting under which the system was applied. The pilot was carried out without the need to access interfaces ot the vehicles control syste using a Smartphone with integrated GPS positioning module. The obtained  saving approximately 5% measured at the fuel station has convinced the railway undertaking to use the DAS in regular operations as a module of their existing traffic management and controll system. Article EI= Eisenbahningenieur September 2012 from Dr.- Ing. Thomas Albrecht, TU Dresden, Fakultät Verkehrswissenschaften "Friedrich List" Dipl. Phys. Matthias Pathe, Projektleiter Interautomation Deutschland GmbH, Berlin  [more]

Not only in the European Union, but also in Asia and worldwide Eco-Driving is an important issue in reducing the ecological footprint and increasing energy efficiency. During the national Energy-Saving Publicity Week in China, Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) conducted an eco-driving training for truck drivers together with the Jiangsu Transport Administration Bureau in the Wuxi Jiangsu Province.Similar to the ACTUATE trainings, the training in China consisted of a theoretical as well as a practical part and was conducted using a "train the trainer" approach in order to maximise the spread of knowledge on eco-driving. In general, GIZ expects that (diesel) fuel consumption and CO2 emissions can be reduced by 5 to 10 percent when applying the eco-driving techniques. Considering the rapidly growing market for ebuses and other public transport modes in Asia, there is a vast take-up potential for the eco-driving trainings developed within the ACTUATE project. [more]

As part of a broad training programme to improve eco-driving skills of Wellington's bus drivers a new technology will be implemented to monitor their driving stlye. The goal is to reduce fuel consumption and emissions and to provide passengers a smoother more comfortable journey, while also reducing the physical wear and tear on vehicles. As the New Zealand Herald reports, the telematic technology will measure and monitor the quality of driving of all drivers, especially with regard to poor behaviour such as speeding, harsh breaking and rough cornering. The system will use real-time data to provide drivers with a simple visual feedback (red, yellow, green) about the quality of their driving.Wellington is also a trolleybus city. In 2009 60 new low-floor trolleybuses were put into operation to replace older vehicles. For the time being, the new technology will however only be installed on diesel buses.[more]

ACTUATE's project coordinator Rupprecht Consult visited Gdynia's public transport operator PKT to exchange knowledge on safe eco-driving training concepts for trolleybuses. PKT Gdynia, an associated partner of the ACTUATE project, is introducing safe eco-driving trainings for their trolleybus drivers as part of a wider modernisation strategy. Already, PKT has installed technical equipment to measure the energy consumption of single vehicles/ drivers and at power substations. The data, which has been collected over one year so far, will be analysed and in a second step used to localise sectors of Gdynia's trolleybus network with above average energy consumption. By using the on-board cameras of their trolleybuses, PKT will then produce educational video clips that help their drivers to apply safe  eco-driving techniques for precisely these sectors and routes.PKT Gdynia and the ACTUATE consortium will deepen this knowledge exchange with regard to the evaluation results and impact of the eco-driving trainings at a later stage of the project. PKT Gdynia also supports the ACTUATE project by reviewing the Polish language version of the training materials for safe eco-driving of...[more]

As the first partner of the ACTUATE consortium, Salzburg AG (SAG) has successfully trained all of its 273 trolleybus drivers in safe eco-driving. An immediate before/after comparison, which was part of the ACTUATE training sessions, showed that more than 90 per cent of all drivers were able to cut down energy consumption (by 20 per cent on average) by applying safe eco-driving techniques. In regular service (with passengers on board) SAG expects energy savings of around 5 per cent. With a software solution developed by ACTUATE partners SAG and Cegelec (a supplier of electrical equipment for trolleybuses) it is now also possible to measure the energy consumption for each individual driver during the training sessions. In addition to all drivers, 39 SAG employees from management, vehicle services and the depot who possess the appropriate driving license participated in the ACTUATE trainings. With this approach a strong support for the ACTUATE project across all departments at SAG is ensured. After a successful pilot phase, the safe eco-driving trainings for trolleybuses were introduced as mandatory training sessions according to Directive 2003/59/EC in February 2013. Before...[more]

In order to support their introduction of safe eco-driving trainings and in order to motivate drivers to apply and retain their newly acquired eco-driving skills, all ACTUATE partners are currently designing motivational in-house campaigns. Every campaign will be tailored to meet specific local requirements.Leipzig for example the idea is to implement a bonus scheme for LVB drivers. By applying their eco-driving skills in practice, drivers will be able to collect points which in turn can be exchanged for incentives. The exact scheme of the bonus programme is being developed at this moment. ACTUATE partner BBG will – together with the participating drivers – jointly develop a benchmark goal regarding energy savings (e.g. 5 per cent less energy consumption). The commonly agreed goal will then be the central aspect of internal team competitions with well performing teams being able to win rewards. All other ACTUATE partners are also working with incentives and competitions to make sure their safe eco-driving trainings will have a long lasting effect. Currently all in-house campaigns are being finalised and will be rolled-out soon.[more]

On 12 and 13 June 2013 the ACTUATE consortium came together for a successful third Partner Meeting in Parma, Italy.To kick-off the meeting, the public transport operators participating in ACTUATE exchanged their views on the safe eco-driving training concepts and materials for different clean vehicles types they have developed. The partners also reported on their experiences with the pilot-trainings that had already been carried out for drivers of trolleybuses, trams and hybrid-buses. On the second day of the meeting, all project partners presented their concept for a motivational in-house campaign that will communicate the benefits of safe eco-driving to the drivers. Together with the other partners each individual campaign was discussed in order to ensure a lasting impact of the ACTUATE trainings on all participating drivers (see also news below). Finally, all meeting participants took the chance to be on board of TEP's new Van Hool trolleybus vehicle for a test drive through the city. The test drive was organised to demonstrate a new software solution that measures and records the vehicle's energy consumption in real-time. The tool was developed by ACTUATE partner Van Hool in...[more]