Lightning Hybrid Cars

Some companies are light years ahead of others by adding a little black box to their fleet vehicles.

A little black box the size of a Zippo cigarette lighter is plugged into a port below Chris Williams’ steering column. It lets him know how he’s doing behind the wheel and lets his employer make the company’s drivers safer and more fuel-efficient.

Williams, group leader of special projects for EnCana Corp.’s U.S. division, was surprised by his first driving report, delivered to his e-mail from the wireless device.

“I always said I thought I was a really good driver until I started receiving my scorecard,” said Williams, who works in the energy company’s Dallas office.

Williams, determined to improve his score, quit hitting the brakes so hard. He went from eight incidents of hard braking per hour in July to 3.3 in September. His overall score rose from 80 to 96 on a 100-point scale.

That’s the kind of improvement EnCana hopes to see as it rolls out use of the device that began as an experiment in Dallas and Denver, where the company financed a driving pilot project for the city.

“We saw some very positive results and felt like this was something we wanted to do divisionwide,” EnCana spokesman Doug Hock said.

The Canadian-based oil and gas producer is interested in saving gas, cutting pollution and, most importantly, keeping drivers safe, Hock said. “We had a vehicle fatality in Texas early this year,” he said.

EnCana teamed up with Denver last year in what was believed to be the first-of-its-kind experiment to test whether drivers could reduce emissions by adjusting their driving styles. The company gave the city a $400,000 grant for the project, which included 160 city vehicles, 240 private vehicles and 30 EnCana employees.

City officials said the results showed a 10 percent drop in vehicle emissions and overall better driving, including a 35 percent decrease in idling.

Denver-based Cartasite Inc. provided the telemetry technology to transmit data from the vehicles over the Internet. The company provides real-time tracking of vehicles and remote equipment, including offshore drilling rigs, for corporations.

The equipment Cartasite used for the pilot project included three brick-sized boxes and antennas in the car.

“We knew we wouldn’t be commercially viable unless we could reduce the technology,” said Cartasite CEO David Armitage.

A Chinese company repackaged the technology into a little black box named Rover — Realtime Onboard Vehicle Evaluation Reporting. The device tracks hard braking, rapid acceleration, speeding, idling, fuel efficiency and the amount of nighttime driving.

The company provides the service, including the device and drivers’ weekly scorecards, for $1.50 a day.

EnCana is expanding the service to all its U.S. vehicles — 575 total in Colorado, Louisiana, Texas and Wyoming.

Hock said a test run of 50 company vehicles in Texas over the summer showed an overall 35 percent reduction in idling time, resulting in a weekly $8.30 savings in fuel per vehicle. Hard braking dropped by 20 percent and the percentage of drivers deemed aggressive — initially 7 percent — was negligible at the end.

Some employees were concerned about “Big Brother” looking at their scorecards, Hock said. But EnCana is interested in tracking driving trends companywide, not focusing on individuals, he said.

“The individual data is really for that person for self improvement,” Hock said

Source AP Denver;
By JUDITH KOHLER
Associated Press Writer