An Israeli start-up has recently been awarded a $10 million investment from US environmentalist, Al Gore’s Clean Tech Fund.
The company, GreenRoad, makes a simple system that not only reduces fuel consumption in cars and saves a lot of money; it reduces dangerous driving, and road accidents.
The system is based on a small device that is mounted on the dashboard of the car. The device has three lights; green, yellow and red – similar to traditional traffic lights. As long as the light is green, drivers are driving well. If the driver swerves or turns recklessly or brakes too hard, the light changes to yellow. The light will stay yellow as long as the car is driven erratically, and will turn red if the driving gets worse.
Marketed to be installed in commercial or company cars, the system also stores a record of the day’s driving, which is available to the company for review.
The device analyses 120 driving manoeuvres and correlates the data with GPS and Google Maps information to account for road conditions when calculating driving quality.
GreenRoad estimates that the device will reduce fuel usage by around 10 per cent, and crash costs by around 50 per cent, making average savings around $1,000 - $4,000 per year. This may not seem like much, but it is estimated that in the US and Europe, that around $230 billion is spent by professional fleets each year on crashes.
Other investors in GreenRoad include Richard Branson’s Green Ventures Fund, Balderton Capital and DAG Ventures.
For further details, visit:
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000541381