There are opportunities to green your fleet even if you don’t change your vehicles or your fuel.  Some simple steps can result in fairly significant benefits, especially if you combine some or all of the steps.  The steps allow you to save fuel and money while decreasing your fleets’ impacts.  A list of these steps is given below and the following sections give a little information on each.

• Right-size your fleet and vehicle types
• Fuel efficient driving tips and operator education
• Idle reduction campaigns
• Regular vehicle maintenance
• Tire inflation

Right-size your fleet and vehicle types

There may be opportunities to optimize the number or types of fleet vehicles.  Upon analyzing your fleet, you may find there are unnecessary vehicles, which can lead to significant cost savings.  After analyzing its fleet, the City of Seattle was able to eliminate more than 100 vehicles due to excess capacity.  Reducing the number of vehicles saved money and allowed the City of Seattle to discourage non-critical trips, which also led to fuel (money) savings.  Eliminating excess vehicles saves on acquisition costs, maintenance costs, overhead costs of managing and storing the vehicles, etc.  All together, these savings can quickly add up to considerable sums.

You may also find that some staff have vehicles that are larger than is really necessary.  For example, some inspectors may not need 4WD SUVs if their inspections only require a moderate amount of equipment and mostly involve driving on paved roads.  Perhaps a mid-size sedan would have enough cargo space and performance capabilities to do the job.  This sedan would save fuel and likely would be cheaper.  Applying this analysis and consideration across your whole fleet could result in considerable cost savings and reductions in fuel use.  The amount you can accomplish through right-sizing efforts depends on the level of control you have over vehicle purchasing as well as the amount of tracking done on your fleet.  The more control you have and the more data you have, the more likely you are to have a chance to have a significant impact.

If your agency uses a motor pool, you have other opportunities to green your fleet operations.  First, consider investing in a professional, computerized motor pool management system.  Some agencies have replaced older systems, i.e. sticky-notes and bulletin boards, and realized substantial savings because vehicle use and availability is controlled much more tightly.  The systems maximize the amount of time a vehicle is used and, thus, minimize the amount vehicle’s sit unused.  This effort may also make you realize that you have excess vehicles in your fleet.  Keep in mind that these systems will likely require training to minimize problems and maximize the benefits.  Another motor pool management improvement you might use is to establish a policy that says motor pool dispatchers will, by default, assign drivers green vehicles.  Drivers would only get a conventional vehicle if no green vehicle is available that meets their request of if they specifically ask for a conventional vehicle.

Fuel efficient driving tips and operator education

One of the most effective and quickest steps you can take to green your fleet is to convey fuel efficient driving tips to your vehicle operators.  Here is a list of good tips:

• avoid aggressive driving
• drive smoothly and maintain a steady speed
• reduce drag on the vehicle
• keep highway speeds reasonable
• avoid idling, even at start-up
• eliminate unnecessary weight in the vehicle
• ensure proper tire inflation
• park in the shade
• share rides to meetings whenever possible

Brief information on each tip is provided below.  According to Consumer Reports, the most important tip for city driving is to avoid aggressive driving.  For highway driving, the best fuel savings techniques are to drive smoothly and avoid carrying things on top of your vehicle.  One thing to note, these driving tips are intended for a driving in a conventional vehicle, and some require modification before being applied to driving an HEV.  Most of the tips remain the same but there are a couple of differences. HEV-specific tips are provided at the end of this discussion.

Driving aggressively wastes fuel; and studies have shown that this type of driving really does not save much time, especially in city driving.  In addition, this driving style can cause some car parts, i.e. brakes and tires, to wear out faster leading to higher maintenance costs.  Consumer Reports found that frequent acceleration and braking caused a 2-3 mpg loss.  Save this fuel by accelerating smoothly and braking gradually.  The same applies whether you are driving between stop lights or on the highway. Anticipate what is happening around and in front of you so you are able to speed up and slow down more smoothly.

For highway driving, maintain a reasonable, steady speed and use cruise control on level highways.  Keeping your highway speed at 55 mph can lead to significant fuel savings; EPA estimates a 10-15% fuel economy loss by driving 65 mph rather than 55 mph.  Similarly, Consumer Reports showed that a Toyota Camry’s fuel economy was 40 mpg when driving 55 mph but dropped to 35 mpg when driving 65 mph and dropped again to only 30 mpg when driving 75 mph.  To help maintain a steady speed, use cruise control but only on relatively level and straight highways.  Using cruise control on excessively hilly or winding highways can result in worse fuel economy because of the way some cruise control systems accelerate and decelerate to maintain the set speed.

After starting a vehicle, drive away as soon as is safe.  Modern engines do not need to be warmed up so the car does not need to idle after starting.  When you let the car idle, you are wasting fuel and causing unnecessary emissions.  In fact, limit idling whenever possible.  If you need to stop driving, turn the car off if you will be stopped for more than 30 seconds.  You will use more gas leaving the car running that long than you will use to restart the engine.  In addition, you will eliminate emissions.

Putting additional weight on or in your vehicle can also reduce your fuel economy.  This is especially true if you load the extra weight on the roof of the vehicle.  Consumer Reports showed a 6 mpg loss when driving with a loaded roof carrier so eliminate these carriers whenever possible.  In fact, eliminate any excess weight from the vehicle, inside or out, to improve your fuel economy.

Proper tire inflation is often given as a means of maintaining optimum fuel economy.  The Aerospace Corporation conducted a study in 1978 that showed a 1% reduction in fuel economy for every 3.3 pounds per square inch (psi) of underinflation. The US Department of Transportation referenced this study in 2004 and stated that “(m)ore recent data provided by Goodyear” showed the reduction to be 1% for ever 2.96 psi.  Contrary to these reports, Consumer Reports recently showed that driving with tires 10% under the recommended psi did not have much effect on fuel economy.  Regardless, proper tire inflation can be a safety and tire wear concern.  Underinflated tires wear faster and require sooner replacement, do not grip the road as well when turning and may lead to a blowout.  Thus, it is important to keep tires properly inflated.

Whenever possible, park in the shade particularly in the summer.  This will help keep the car cool, which means less air conditioning and fuel savings.  It will also reduce evaporative emissions from the vehicle, which helps maintain good air quality.

When driving an HEV, several recommendations can help maximize fuel economy more than they would in a conventional vehicle:

• Brake gently and as early as possible
• Accelerate quickly
• Use the display to track performance

Anticipating driving conditions can have even bigger impacts in an HEV than a conventional vehicle.  HEVs use energy from braking to recharge the electric batteries but the system only works under gentle braking.  The Toyota Prius can recover more than 60% of the braking energy if braking is smooth and light, but hard braking loses much of the energy as heat.  Next, an HEV performs better if you accelerate quickly.  The design of an HEV’s engine is more efficient at high speed and torque than when accelerating gently over a longer period of time.  Of course, only accelerate quickly to the extent that safety allows.  Finally, use an HEVs fuel economy display to track performance in real-time and adjust driving based on what is shown to be the most beneficial.

These tips are useless if they are not conveyed to vehicle operators.  How this communication happens depends on your agency.  If you conduct formal training for operators, you could incorporate these tips into that training.  If not, you could develop a memo listing these driving tips to be distributed to all employees.  You could also incorporate the tips into an announcement about your green fleet plan.  Tell your employees that these are some simple things that they can do to support your plan.  Small signs, stickers, etc. placed in the vehicles themselves may be helpful.  This can be particularly useful for the HEV-specific tips.  However you relate the tips to your staff, be sure to let your them know why they are being asked to do these things – support the green fleet plan, reduce our dependence on imported oil, reduce GHG emissions, improve air quality, save money, etc.

Idle reduction campaigns

Idling means 0 mpg; idling also means emissions.  In some cases these emissions may concentrate in areas with employees (a shop or garage) or the general public (a drawbridge near a commercial area or parking lots at a park), which can lead to health impacts.  Reducing idling reduces these emissions, protects human health, and saves fuel and money.  Thus, all agencies should consider an idle reduction campaign.  These campaigns are particularly important for diesel vehicles since these emissions constitute such a health threat.  A good resource is DOE’s website on idle reduction, which contains a lot of information on equipment, laws, benefits and success stories. Another is the Puget Sound Clean Air's website on anti-idling.

Diesel engines are estimated to burn 1 gallon of fuel for every hour of idling.  This can add up when dealing with some medium- and heavy-duty diesel vehicle applications.  One way to combat idling in these vehicles is to ensure the engines you buy have an idle shutdown timer installed and activated.  These timers automatically turn off the engine after a pre-programmed period of time.  Programming happens at the factory, but they should be able to set the time to whatever you want.  Common shut-down times are in the range of 3 to 10 minutes.

Regular vehicle maintenance

Regular maintenance helps keep your vehicles in good shape, which means longer life for the vehicles, better resale value and improvements in fuel economy.  Among other things, proper maintenance means engine tune-ups, wheel alignment, timely fluid changes and topped-off fluid levels.  Judicious maintenance will keep your vehicle operating optimally, which will save fuel and reduce air emissions.

When conducting maintenance, there are things you can do to make your vehicles greener.  Energy-conserving motor oils can improve fuel economy.  There are two categories of these oils: Energy Conserving (EC) and Energy Conserving II (ECII).  These oils are required to undergo tests to confirm the fuel economy benefits.  EC oils show at least 1.5% improvement in fuel economy while ECII oils show at least 2.7% improvement.  Oils that meet either of these criteria will have a special marking from the American Petroleum Institute on the front and back labels.

Another useful tip is to keep wheels in proper alignment because out-of-alignment wheels waste fuel as they fight to pull in different directions.  Finally, changing your vehicle’s fluids at proper intervals and maintaining proper fluid levels will help the vehicle run in its optimal state, which saves fuel and reduces emissions.  Another tip that is often repeated but has been shown not to have much effect on fuel economy is to keep your air filter clean.  According to Consumer Reports’ tests, the computer controls over the air/fuel ratio in modern engines keep a proper level of air in the combustion chamber regardless of the cleanliness of the air filter.  This means that you will not see a significant fuel economy decrease from driving with a dirty air filter.