Vnomics says it recently received a patent for its True Fuel solution. The newly awarded Patent No. 10,632,941 issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is for Systems And Methods For Measuring And Reducing Vehicle Fuel Waste.
With this patent, True Fuel is distinguished from other fuel efficiency technologies for its unique and innovative method of recording and comparing vehicle and route segment characteristics when determining fuel use, the company said. True Fuel account for the impact of vehicle profile and load characteristics and route factors such as slope, traffic controls and volume, weather conditions, time of day, infrastructure conditions, and real-time route blockages.
“Most fleets, particularly large ones, have a mixed configuration of trucks, loads and routes on which they deliver loads,” said Bob Magnant, vice president of product management at Vnomics. “All of those unique characteristics play a role in fuel efficiency. With data from True Fuel, we can isolate some or all of those characteristics and determine how relatively important they are in terms of their impact on fuel economy.
“With this information, fleets have a number of value-added capabilities with True Fuel, including the opportunity to choose the best truck from a fuel-efficiency perspective for delivering loads based on vehicle and route characteristics. In addition, fleets can predict fuel costs for delivering loads given the configuration of their trucks and routes, and use that information to enable dynamic pricing. Ultimately as well, the capability allows for more informed truck purchase decisions from a fuel-economy perspective.”
True Fuel calculates a truck’s potential fuel economy given its route, load and other external factors, and then identifies any fuel waste caused by inefficient driving practices. The system also coaches drivers in the cab, in real-time, and provides an assessment of their fuel-efficiency performance after the trip. True Fuel targets only those aspects a driver can control, such as engine speed, idling and highway speeding, while automatically normalizing factors such as payload weight, route, and weather and truck configuration.
True Fuel also provides fleet managers with metrics to account for fuel use. Visit vnomicscorp.com for more information.