DriveTag is a unique piece of technology. It is small, powered by a replaceable coin-cell battery, and uses a high-definition accelerometer to register driver actions that have a direct impact on fuel usage and road safety: braking, acceleration and cornering. Via Bluetooth BLE it communicates with a driver app installed on a Smartphone. This allows for real-time coaching of drivers, providing them with contextually relevant feedback on how to improve their driving style.
‘Under the bonnet’ there is a ton of technology involved that changes the game and makes DriveTag robust and easy to use:
DriveTag self-learns its orientation and self-calibrates as soon as it is installed on the vehicle; it can be fixed to the windscreen in any orientation. This translates into an easy and faultless installation and on-boarding of drivers. From that point onwards, DriveTag registers and stores high fidelity accelerometer data from the vehicle.
The fixed mount provides superior coupling to the car, which combined with a significantly higher data rate (10Hz versus 1Hz of a smartphone) reveals high resolution car vibrations. The windscreen itself also helps by acting as an amplifier of vehicle vibration.
Patent protected power management algorithms on the tag enables us to stretch the lifetime of an off-the-shelf coin cell CR2032 battery to more than a full year assuming 20,000 kilometres of normal driving. The tag is by default always asleep unless a certain vibrational pattern wakes it up so that it can start registering vehicle data.
Advanced journey detection algorithms make use of the gyroscope and GPS functions of the Smartphone in conjunction with BLE proximity detection with the tag to determine whether a driver is indeed moving in a vehicle and has not stepped on a train, a bike or has started carpooling with a colleague. Our application logic makes sure that no trip is registered erroneously.
The DriveTag started for me with the idea ’sustainability starts with yourself’. Apart from the serious impact on fuel and CO2 savings the App surprised me by making me a lot more relaxed in my daily commute. Creating awareness resulted in less intense acceleration, keeping more distance, and moreover, my fellow road users annoy me a lot less. I want to score a straight A and keep the top ranking in my team. I love the thought that we can make the Dutch roads a lot safer for us all.
I have my mobile phone, within view, fixed to the dashboard. It shows something like this: Color and Letter say something about your driving results. More green is better and A is better than B, C till H. Above is all you see while driving. You are not expected to do anything with your phone, apart from being stimulated to drive safer. ?.
Thanks to Mindful Driving we save about 10% on fuel and CO2 each year. We burn millions of liters each year, so the saving is significant and so is the contribution to lowering our carbon footprint. But Mindful Driving is not only about fuel savings. It has a positive effect on our drivers who experience less stress on their daily journeys. En because of that, vitality has improved across our driver community. Moreover, it is a lot more comfortable for our passengers when the bus driver anticipates better in traffic and refrain from accelerating or braking forcefully.
30% less miles driven on fossil fuel with my Ampera. The App turned out to be right again and again when it reminded me with a gentle beep that my last actions could have been more mindful. In the meantime, I have grown accustomed to want to complete my trip with the highest A score! In practice it’s a shift fun mindset and it doesn’t cost me any additional travel time and I feel a lot more relaxed in traffic. In short: DriveTag is from now on my trusted co-traveller and I hope for many green A’s to come.
With the introduction of electric buses in our fleet, fuel costs have become less of a concern. However, drivers who drive more mindful on an electric bus is capable of extending the range with more than 25%. And as a bus needs more time to be recharged than to be refueled, range extention by Mindful Driving becomes extremely important. We see that already in the more than 500 electric buses that we operate in the Netherlands. These buses are also equipped with the Mndful Driving solution of Sycada. In addition, we use the Sycada system to gather live data from eBuses and charging points so as to more effectively manage our growing fleet of zero-emission vehicles.
