Controlled fleet evaluation

High exhaust vehicle emissions are associated to non-efficient fuel combustions, which also means elevated fuel consumption. By identifying high-emitting vehicles with remote sensing, private companies can save fuel (and pollutant emissions) in their fleets. Also, there are plenty of possibilities by evaluating controlled fleets of vehicles, for instance estimating the reduction of emissions by repairing or retrofitting some individual vehicles.

The objective

Fleet owners want to know the status of their fleets. They want to know if all vehicles are working properly or if any of them may be deteriorated or is close to a failure. They also want to check that any vehicle of their fleet is illegaly manipulated by subcontractors or drivers.

On the other hand, Public Authorities want to know if the concessionary companies comply with the regulations; they also want to audit the real emissions of their public buses or carry out specific evaluations of some groups of vehicles in terms of real emissions, like taxis or other public vehicle fleets.

For all those cases, Opus remote sensing is the most cost-effective solution, as vehicles can be evaluated without interrumping their normal operations.

How is it done?

The solution is different depending on the client and its needs, but in a generic way, it is usual to apply the following steps:

Identification of the fleet and its routes: You determine which specific vehicles you want to evaluate and where they drive. If, for example, they are trucks that make logistic routes, a good place to measure them is their entrance to the logistic centers. If they are public buses, a good place can be the garages or their usual routes in the city. If you want to evaluate taxis, a good place can be the city's airport.
Selection of the measurement points: You select which specific points are to be used. The number of days in each location and the number of locations depends on the distribution of the fleet and the number of vehicles to be evaluated.
Data collection: The RSD is deployed at the selected points for the agreed time to monitor the fleet under evaluation.
Analysis of the results: Opus experts analyze the measurements to determine the status of the fleet, both as a whole and vehicle by vehicle. A consultancy report is delivered to the client.
Generation of ISO-17025 report: A laboratory report is issued, which can be used for regulatory or audit purposes by the client.

Some success stories

There are 4 different types of activities in fleet evaluation estudies that should be mentioned:

Private fleets of trucks

Mahou San Miguel is the leading brewing company in Spain. By remotely measuring the truck's emissions, Mahou can evaluate how polluting is the fleet. We perform a fleet emissions study around every 2 years. This way, the company can evaluate the evolutions of its fleet emissions over the years. This practice has increased the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of Mahou by reducing its on-road traffic emissions and contributed to the company winning the "European Business Award for the Environment" in Spain.

An additional application is to evaluate whether amodification of a vehicle's engine reduces its emissions. A successful case is that of DualFuel.

Opus RSE evaluated the real-driving emissions of delivery trucks in different configurations: original diesel engine, LPG-transformed and CNG-transformed. The company responsible of the retrofitting was DualFuel, who applied their propietary "Duel Fusion" modifications.

The results were clear:

The Fuel Fusion systems clearly reduced hydrocarbon and NOx emissions by a factor of up to 3.
To a lesser extent, particulate matter emissions were also reduced.

Thanks to these results, and after an ISO-17025 report was issued by Opus RSE, the end-user decided to convert a large part of its fleet to alternative propulsion systems.

Private fleets of buses

Alsa, a Spanish private bus transport company, decided to hire Opus RSE to analyze the buses fleet condition. 200 buses of the company were analyzed by the RSD equipment. The project was done in collaboration with Repsol, the most important spanish energy and petrochemical company. The measurements were done in different bus stations of Alsa. The buses could drive normally when their emissions were measured.

The measurements showed that the fleet had very high emissions of hydrocarbons and particulate matter. It was very alarming to find that 9 of the buses were emitting even 11 times over the average of the rest of the fleet. Some mechanical failures of the buses could be proposed, just by analysing their emissions.

Public fleets of buses

Ricardo E&E uses Opus RSDs to monitor the emissions of Scottish public buses. They can check if retrofitting activities really improve their emissions. The work, known as the Bus Emission Abatement Retrofit (BEAR) programme, utilises Opus remote sensing technology to evaluate the on-road performance of retrofits that are intended to lower bus emissions in support of improving air quality.

Other fleets of cars and vans

We help our customers to analyze any types of fleets. We evaluate cars from leasing companies or employee's cars from a certain corporate firm. We also evaluate the vehicles from individual drivers. One example is the work we did to evaluate specific cars after the 'Dieselgate', providing ISO-17025 reports of their car's actual emissions to private drivers that wanted to know the real-emissions of their cars.