Twelve years of EcoDriving

A story written by Michael Axelsson, vice chairman of STR and responsible for EcoDriving in the organization.

Background
In 1997 STR (Swedish National Association of driving schools) was contacted by our Finnish colleagues about a new education for skilled drivers in order to reduce fuel consumption. Without any preconception we met, drove and measured consumption. 1998 a group of 8 instructors, lead by Jan Alexandersson started to develop a Swedish version of EcoDriving. I was one of the instructors chosen for this project and started the work together with my 7 colleagues from STR with involvement from the Swedish Road administration and the Swedish Energy Agency. Our goal was to create an education that should give the driver a long lasting measurable reduction of fuel. After some studying we realized that other positive effects occurred, more mileages on tires, less wear and tear on breaks. We had a lot of help from the manufactures of vehicles, Volvo for example, that supplied us with knowledge. It was important that our way of driving didn’t have negative effects on the cars. I, for instance, drove a VW golf equipped with eleven computers that measured everything that was of interest for us, emissions, fuel consumption, speed, level of accelerator, braking power, number of revolutions and so on. All that work resulted in an education that have 1,5 hours of driving training and 2 hours of theoretical education that we call “EcoDriving the Swedish way”.


During the years of 1998-1999
We launched the EcoDriving education in 1998, and it was received with a lot of doubt. After a while the increasing fuel price gave us the push forward we needed, as companies and organizations with large fleets realized the benefit of fuel reduction. In the beginning it was all about education. After a couple of years some of the companies came back and wanted more education, due to the fact that the consumption was back on the levels they had been from the beginning. We then realized the importance of pre-education measuring, incitement for the drivers and a proper follow up, otherwise it could take about 6 months for the company to revert to the old levels of consumption, ant the education was of no use.
The Swedish Road Administration gave us a lot of help to promote EcoDriving, it was done by seminars, lectures and other arrangement. The environment was at this point a less interesting issue, it was a part of our education especially in the theoretical part, but it was all about money.

To be continued...