Tech: How to Use Data to Increase Your Fuel Efficiency

Putting Knowledge to Use To Save Money

Owning and operating a fleet comes with several operational costs that can affect your bottom line. Fuel spending is one of the largest of these, and one that’s mostly inevitable. If you want to be as profitable as possible, you need to lower your fuel costs.

Given how much the price of diesel fluctuates, fuel efficiency will always be a leading concern. You can’t avoid buying fuel altogether, but you can take steps to use less of it. Thankfully, modern technology enables you to increase your fuel efficiency through gathering and analyzing data.

Why Turn to Data for Fuel Efficiency?

You may question why you should use data to monitor and increase your fuel efficiency. After all, you can do things like encourage better driving habits and tuning engines regularly without data. While those actions will help improve fuel economy, you may be overlooking other factors that affect your fuel consumption.

Countless things affect how much diesel you use, and data can help you see them. More than likely, there are several areas throughout your operation that are costing you that you don’t know about. Even if you don’t have any glaring inefficiencies, data can reveal easy ways you can make improvements.

With that in mind, here’s how you can use data to increase fuel efficiency.

Gather Data Everywhere

The first step to using data in any kind of business application is gathering it. If you want to make the most of this process, you should collect data from everywhere you can. Remember that some solutions may come from unexpected places, so don’t stop at just monitoring fuel consumption.

You may think that you don’t need to monitor engine performance too closely because you maintain them regularly. However, more than 57 percent of commercial vehicles still have issues after maintenance, and data can help you find these. Don’t let assumptions about performance or efficiency influence what you monitor and what you don’t.

Use Predictive Analytics

After you gather all the data you can, you have two options when it comes to using it. You could either analyze it manually or use a machine learning program to do it. If you can afford it, the second option is the way to go, mostly because of predictive analytics.

Predictive analytics is a process where an AI makes predictions based on data you give it. With fuel efficiency, this can look like the program giving suggestions about how much fuel you can save by adopting certain practices. You can use these predictions to determine the best way to cut fuel costs.

Monitor Performance After Making Changes

Once you’ve gathered data and made changes based on it, your job still isn’t over. You need to keep monitoring fuel efficiency to see if your adjustments have caused any noticeable changes. If you notice anything that isn’t working or not giving the desired results, you can roll it back.

Data collection and analysis can be a significant investment, so you want to keep an eye on the results. You can start small by making changes in just a few vehicles and monitoring those. If these adjustments lead to improvements, you can expand them to the entire fleet.

Don’t Forget About Weather and Traffic Data

Remember that outside factors can affect your fuel economy too. To get the best possible fuel efficiency, you should also consider data about these external influences. If you’re using predictive analytics, you can use them to account for things like traffic and weather.

Something as mundane as cold weather can reduce your fuel economy by 15 percent or more. Data analytics systems can consider these factors to provide suggestions about routes or driving practices. You can then use these to inform the best course of action for each trip to save fuel.

Data Analysis Can Help Everywhere

You don’t have to run a tech company to benefit from modern technology. Data analysis might not immediately come to mind when you think of fleet operations, but it’s still a useful resource. By collecting and analyzing data, you can find inefficiencies and alternate courses of action throughout your business.

Fuel is one of a fleet’s largest expenses, but you can reduce its cost with data. Take your fleet into the modern age and use data analysis to improve your fuel economy.

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