Driving Greener

We’re more than a little interested to note that Denver, that mile-high city with one foot in the Rocky Mountains and the other in the Great Plains, recently rolled out a program aimed at saving gas and reducing automotive air pollutants such as CO2.

"Driving Change," as this pilot program is called, involves about 400 volunteers, half of which are city employees, and uses an under-dash accelerometer and wireless technology to record how people use their cars’ gas and brake pedals.

The way this works is, each driver can monitor his own driving habits on a personal Web site that will chart that driver’s driving efficiency and will point out bad habits – making gas-guzzling jackrabbit starts, for instance.

This interests us because we’ve been doing something like this for a good long time now. But our driver feedback system is different from the one used in Denver. It’s called the Hybrid Vehicle System Indicator. It’s mounted on the dash panels of our cars equipped with Hybrid Synergy Drive, and it provides real-time feedback about each driver’s habits.

The systems work differently in different models – for instance, the version in the Prius is different from the version in the Camry hybrid, and they’re both different from the version in the Highlander hybrid. But in spite of those differences, they have the same fundamental purpose – they help maximize driving efficiency.

The system works so well that drivers who have our hybrid vehicles find themselves adapting their driving habits to the information displayed on the meters, thus helping these already frugal vehicles save even more gas.

Indeed, we feel so strongly about the value and importance of this technology that we plan, in the long term, to equip every new vehicle we produce with similar technology. We wrote about this on January 4, in a post titled, "Driving with the Eco Driving Indicator: Helping You Get Better Fuel Economy." You can read that post by clicking here.

It appears that the equipment and software used in the Denver program isn’t quite as sophisticated as ours – for instance, the information that might lead to better driving isn’t displayed, in real time, on a vehicle dash. But that’s OK. We applaud Denver’s leadership as it seeks to drive change, and wish them luck with the program.

We strongly suspect that drivers who really adapt to the system will find that they can, indeed, drive to make a difference. And that’s worth doing.

Which makes us wonder – have you taken any steps to make your driving greener and more efficient? If so, what are they? We’d really like to know.

-Jon F. Thompson, Editor, Open Road

Comments

[Taylor]

To start off, I love Toyota and I own, drive, and love my Prius. I want to know, why haven't you started talks with the guys developing a plug in Prius battery system? I would love one for my car, especially through Toyota. Please let me know and begin talks if possible. :-)