The face in your mobile will save fuel and the environment

“If you drive really badly, for example at 200 km an hour, then the little man will become red and angry,” says Jonas Westman about the mobile application that will help drivers to drive in a more environmentally friendly manner.

He and Sebastian Lewenhaupt have developed the idea for a mobile application – which they refer to as driver support – when they prepared their degree project at the School of Electrical Power Engineering at KTH. With the help of STING’s entrepreneur’s education, they have further developed their business idea and examined its commercial potential.

“Our idea is to help the driver to drive in a more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly manner with the driver being rewarded for correct driving behaviour, for example if he or she brakes slowly,” says Sebastian Lewenhaupt.

The mobile application is based on a points system where you can compete with yourself and others. The more environmentally friendly the driver drives, the more points he will receive. Braking slowly is only one of the many ways to drive greener.

This type of driver support can help to reduce fuel consumption by up to 20%. This has been shown by Sveriges Trafikskolors Riksförbund - The Swedish National Association of Driving Schools (STR) which the students’ calculations are based on. The tests carried out by the students were based on driving scenarios which car manufacturers use to specify emissions and combustion in new vehicles.

Technically speaking, Sebastian Lewenhaupt and Jonas Westman’s driver support system registers the behaviour of the driver with the help of GPS technology. A green happy smiling face is displayed on the mobile telephone screen when the driver drives sensibly and environmentally friendly. There are five different faces, from a green and happy face to a yellow face, to the red and unhappy face; the images change colour on the screen depending on how the driver drives his vehicle. What has been important when developing the idea is that the information provided to the driver of a vehicle is clear and easy to read.

“The driver has to focus on the road, and must not be distracted by too much information. At the same time, the information must be clear and easily understood,” says Sebastian Lewenhaupt.

At the end of each run, the driver is awarded an average grade along with two tips on what he or she should consider next time. The grades become driving history which the driver can read off in the form of a graph at his/her own convenience.

There were 2.5 billion mobile application downloads alone last year, and this is a clear indication that people are used to using mobile applications in their day-to-day activities. This points to the driver support system having considerable potential to succeed, says Sebastian Lewenhaupt and Jonas Westman. Their supervisor agrees.

“This mobile application is excellent timing. The vehicle industry today is conducting intensive development in order to integrate communications systems in the cars of the future so that intelligent driver support can be created,” says Peter Händel, professor of signal treatment at KTH.

For more information, contact Sebastian Lewenhaupt on 073 - 441 64 64 / slew@kth.se or Jonas Westman at 073 - 620 83 99 / jonwes@kth.se.

Peter Larsson