FIA & ACEA see eco-driving as major pillar for CO2 strategy

Publication date: 20 December 2006

The European car manufacturers and the European motoring clubs support the aim of the European Commission to encourage further energy efficiency as a vital element to achieve sustainable mobility and strengthen the competitiveness of the EU economy.

In the interest of all automotive stakeholders, including the mobile consumers, FIA and ACEA stress the need to combine efforts and to adopt a cost-efficient approach. Technological innovations, infrastructure improvement, the use of alternative fuels and behavioural changes have to be combined to achieve the most cost-efficient energy consumption.

Both FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) and ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers Association) support the consistent and comprehensive approach chosen by the European Commission in its recent Energy Efficiency Action Plan. The current technology-based approach to reduce car emissions needs to be supplemented with infrastructure and behaviour related measures, as is the case in other sectors.

Amongst other efforts, both motoring clubs and car manufacturers help motorists increase the energy efficiency of their cars by offering fuel-efficient driving courses. Long-term analysis shows that the promotion of such driver information and education schemes increases overall fuel efficiency of passenger cars by five to ten percent, a non-negligible contribution to reducing greenhouse gasses.

The potential support for eco-driving from gear-shift indicators(1)  is currently being investigated with the support of the European Commission as well as ACEA and FIA. Such devices could help motorists in realising the full potential of eco-driving, which has been demonstrated to be large in many studies.

FIA and ACEA urge the European Commission to include fuel-efficient driving into future strategy proposals in the view of reaching most cost-efficient policy.

Contact:
Olivier Lenz
FIA Brussels Office
Research Officer
Tel: +32 2 282 08 25
email: o.lenz@fiabrussels.com 

Sigrid de Vries
ACEA
Director Communications
Tel: +32 2 738 73 45
email: sv@acea.be

Note to the editors:

The Association des Constructeurs Européens d’Automobiles (ACEA) represents the 13 major European car, truck and bus manufacturers. They provide jobs to over 12 million Europeans and are the largest private R&D investor in the EU.

The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) represents through its affiliated members, the national motoring and touring organisations in Europe, more than 40 million citizens in the European Union.

Both FIA and ACEA work together in the ECODRIVEN project co-financed by the European Commission. ECODRIVEN, the European Campaign On improving DRIVing behaviour, ENergy-efficiency and traffic safety is a synchronised European-wide eco-driving campaign aiming at drivers of passenger cars, delivery vans, lorries and buses in 9 EU-countries, including Eastern-European countries. The campaign is based on a bottom-up approach through European-wide local and regional collaborations.

Download this press release here.

press_release_integrated_approach_co2.pdf (31 KB)

For more information:
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/intelligent/projects/steer_en.htm

(1) A board computer gives signal to the driver when to shift up and down in view of best fuel consumption