Tips from backseat drivers are rarely appreciated, but what if you could get information that would help you drive more efficiently, saving both money and the environment?
WeNow, a French energy-tech start-up, offers an optimising app for both vehicles and their drivers. Their solution is simple enough – connect a small box to your car via bluetooth or your car’s OBD-II port, and let the clever tech within learn your driving style, consumption, distance travelled, relative acceleration, and other data points.
WeNow collates and measures your data, comparing it to similar vehicles to establish patterns and recommendations to smooth your driving.
Essentially it’s a type of guided ‘hypermiling‘, a term fashioned in the US for getting the best possible fuel efficiency while getting to your destination on time. Entire communities are devoted to sharing tips and strategies.
Where WeNow really offers a great service is for car and truck fleets – companies that manage a large number of cars or heavy vehicles can gain key insights that quickly scale into hugely useful datasets with an end goal to improve efficiencies. WeNow makes an assessesment of driving habits and sends personalised tips and advice after each trip, as well as monthly reports to track performances.
And WeNow also offers a proactive carbon offsetting scheme, where savings from using the technology can be fully or partially reinvested into green projects, such as CO2 offset programmes – a way to offset emissions without costing you anything.
The company states that just through changing driving habits it’s possible to use 5 to 15 per cent less fuel and reduce maintenance costs. They also report that more eco-efficient driving can reduce accident risk by 10 per cent, although it’s not exactly clear where those statistics come from. WeNow has already logged more than one million kilometres, partnering with 15 companies, and recently launched a guarantee to deliver monetary savings – if savings don’t materialise, companies are eligible for a complete refund.
Additionally WeNow has partnered with the UN by becoming a signatory of Climate Neutral Now, an initiative of UN Climate Change.
“WeNow is an example of a startup company showing creativity and leadership in the way towards climate neutrality in the transport sector, thereby making an important contribution to the fight against climate change,” said Niclas Svenningsen, who heads up the Climate Neutral Now initiative of UN Climate Change. And they’ve also been highlighted as start-up whose work is closely aligned with the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – in particular number 12 (responsible consumption) and number 13 (climate action).
WeNow is currently primarily targeting companies and car fleet management, but interested individuals can also get involved for an upfront fee of 30 EUR, and a small monthly subscription cost for continued monitoring.
