When it comes to purchasing or leasing electric and hybrid vehicles within the next two years, as much as 70% of fleet audiences are likely to consider doing so. With this growing popularity, comes the urgent need for professionals within the automotive industry to receive specific training with these vehicles.
Through partnerships with fleet driver training company, Energy Saving Trust has subsidised efficient driving training for more than 85,000 fleet drivers over the last 10 years and has trained more than 1,200 driving instructors.
So what are the benefits of driver training?
As well as understanding the basics of your electric or hybrid vehicle, driver training teaches the importance of ecodriving – a driving style that simultaneously reduces fuel costs, cuts carbon emissions and reduces accident rates.
Safety benefits
- fuel consumption reduction
- collision reduction
Emissions reduction
- smooth driving techniques
Financial savings
- fuel savings
- lower service and maintenance costs
Energy Saving Trust has reports and data from numerous fleet studies from the UK and overseas showing the long term fuel savings from fuel efficient driving training to be between 3.0 and 6.2%, and the collision reduction benefits from fuel efficient driving training to be around 20% to 30%.
Efficient driving training delivers this reduction in collisions because efficiency training focusses very much on greater anticipation. Through partnerships with fleet driver training companies, Energy Saving Trust has subsidised efficient driving training for more than 85,000 fleet drivers over the last 10 years. However, the potential carbon and fuel savings are far greater than this, as around 500,000 fleet drivers a year receive safety-based training in the UK, and efficiency could be incorporated in to the majority of this training.
In fact, this is already starting to happen: two of the driver training companies that partner with Energy Saving Trust’s Ecodriving programme – AA Drivetech and IAM Roadsmart – are already building efficiency messages in to their standard fleet driver training. If more fleets were to follow driver training best practice, this could realistically lead to hundreds of thousands of drivers each year saving perhaps 5% on their fuel consumption and reducing their carbon emissions.
Why you should review the driver training tips
The importance of driver training comes hand in hand with the rise of fleets transitioning to electric vehicles throughout 2020 and beyond. Our ‘Driver Training and Operations’ presentation in collaboration with Go Ultra Low provides you with everything you need to know about carrying out driver training in your organisation, efficient driving tips, designing a driver training course and implementation of driver training.
Our expert panellists include Energy Saving Trusts Driver Training Consultant Bob Saynor, Jon Williams, Change Manager at DriveSense and Simon Poole, Managing Director at Pro2.
Drivesense is a driver training company with a long history of delivering fuel efficient driving, including delivering the majority of the training that the Energy Saving Trust has subsidised. Drivesense has found that the use of in-vehicle telematics can support in-vehicle training effectively, helping lock-in and ensure the longevity of the benefits. Furthermore the new generation of app-based in-vehicle technologies can offer many of the advantages of traditional hard-wired systems but at much lower cost and complexity.
Pro2 is an automotive consultancy that offers a range of events and tailored training courses including efficient driving training for both conventional and electric vehicles. For electric vehicles, training should focus strongly on controls, modes and features – traditional product training – as well as on driving the vehicles efficiently. For EVs, maximising the use of regenerative braking to convert momentum back in to battery charge is the key technique and one that requires a good level of driver anticipation.
Review the driving training tips presentation.
You can find more information about fuel efficient driving, including a list of training suppliers that offer Energy Saving Trust subsidised fleet training for conventional and electric vehicles.