“eco Drive” Unveiled by Fiat and Microsoft at the Frankfurt

At the Frankfurt Motor Show Fiat Group Automobiles together with Microsoft will unveil its “Eco Drive”.

This Eco Drive solution headed by the Fiat Group Automobiles shows that an automaker’s environmental responsibility should continue even when the car leaves the production line and should extend up to the time when consumers start using their cars.

At present the official fuel consumption and emission figures of cars are obtained by using cars that are driven by professional drivers on a Roller Dynamometer Test Bench. The results are then certified by the European Union. The testing takes place in optimum ambient conditions with fixed vehicle speed, time and gear shift options but without the use of air conditioning, radio, lights, and auto meter tachometer other devices to ensure that the results are comparable. However real emissions levels are significantly different and usually are dependent on where the car is driven whether in a rural or an urban setting. Likewise the condition of the car as well as the driver’s driving style is also being considered.

Basically the Eco Drive has the same purpose as that of the Roller Dynamometer Test Bench and that is to determine fuel consumption and emission of vehicles however in the manner of gathering data that is where the Eco Drive surpass the latter since all of its gathered data relating to vehicle efficiency and emission are simply transmitted into a normal USB key via the Blue&Me’s USB gate. The driver have to simply plugs the USB into a PC and viola!—the driver is provided with detailed environmental performance of the car including of course its level of CO2 emissions for each trips that it took. And that’s not all! The Eco Drive also analyzes the driver’s style and then provides recommendations and tips on how to further improve driving to save fuel and to reduce CO2 emissions.

The Eco Drive also encourages the driver to set targets for his travels like in terms of CO2 reduction for particular journeys or even go as far as set a target covering a certain period of time. The objective of the Eco Drive is to help drivers to better understand their cars so that they may be able to change their driving behaviors in such a way that they will reduce the harmful effect of their vehicles to the environment.

This project was initiated by Microsoft and Fiat nearly four years ago and will be employed across the Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Iveco, and Lancia ranges. The Eco Drive was developed on Microsoft’s flexible and updateable platform Microsoft Auto, which was innovated by Fiat in partnership with Microsoft to come up with the in-car infotainment solution called the Blue&Me™.

Eco Drive will be made available starting 2008 in certain Fiat models equipped with the Blue&Me™ system. This marks another step in the innovative collaboration between Microsoft and Fiat Group Automobiles.