The Eco Driving (Europe) / Driver Efficiency (North America) report shows Fleet Managers the essential information about drivers' driving styles that might affect their fuel consumption and wear and tear of the vehicles. Coaching the drivers on driving style might both help reduce the spending on fuel and reduce the footprint on the environment.
The report can be configured by the weight of Parameters and Score Mapping to tailor to your fleet and your drivers. For example, vehicles in some fleets may spend a lot of time driving on the highways and would attribute more weight to e.g. the Cruise Control parameter, whereas vehicles in other fleets may operate with a lot of stops and would attribute more weight to e.g. the Anticipation parameter. For more on this, please see How the Configurations Work.
Table of Contents
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Parameters
7 parameters (+2 auxiliary) are available in the report to let Fleet Managers build a comprehensive picture of drivers' driving styles with respect to fuel efficiency:
- Cruise Control
- Coasting (any gear)
- High Torque
- Green Band
- Anticipation
- Idling
- Over Speed
- Driving Time (auxiliary)
- Engine on Time (auxiliary)
Cruise Control
- Raw data is the time when Cruise Control is on and the accelerator is not depressed
- Percentage value is against engine active + engine idle (total Engine on Time)
Coasting (any gear)
- Raw data is the time when Cruise Control is not active and engine torque or load is < 20% and the vehicle is moving and the accelerator is not depressed and the brake is not depressed
- Percentage value is against engine active + engine idle (total Engine on Time)
- Coasting, in general, may save fuel. However, coasting in neutral leads to less control over a vehicle and is not encouraged. It is illegal in some of the states in the U.S. and is frowned upon in Europe
High Torque
- Raw data is the time when the engine torque or load is >= 90% and Cruise Control is not on
- Percentage value is calculated against engine active + engine idle (total Engine on Time)
- This is frequently interpreted as “heavy-footed” driving and is commonly seen (and is counted in the Samsara system) as a signal of bad driving. High torque can occur when a driver aggressively engages the accelerator pedal - aggressive acceleration increases the amount of fuel consumed. (Source: https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/chief/conference/ei20/session8/acattivera.pdf). The more time one spends in high torque, the worse
Green Band
- Raw data is time spent in the most efficient RPM band - between 800 and 1700
- Percentage value is against engine active + engine idle (total Engine on Time)
- Green Band is frequently seen as the opposite or inverse of High RPM driving, and the more time spent in Green Band is indicative of more efficient driving
Anticipation
- Anticipated brake count is when the brake is depressed less than 1 second after the accelerator was depressed
- Brake count is when the brake is depressed after not being depressed
- Percentage value is against total brake count
- This is indicative of unsafe and aggressive driving leading to higher wear and tear and potentially higher fuel spending
Idling
- Idling is the time when the engine is running with 0 mph speed (with PTO turned off)
- PTO = power takeoff equipment (cranes, walking floors, blower systems, dump truck beds)
- Percentage value against total engine run time excluding PTO
Over Speed
- Over Speed is the time spent speeding - as defined by the configurable threshold set by a Fleet Manager; it might be different from the legal speed limit
- Percentage value against total engine run time excluding PTO
- Setting a lower speed limit on the vehicle speed controller is worth about 1.5% fuel savings for every 1 MPH reduction in cruise speed (Source: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/812146-commercialmdhd-truckfuelefficiencytechstudy-v2.pdf).
Driving Time (auxiliary)
- Driving Time is runtime > 0 or rpm > 0. If no data is reported for 30 seconds, we assume the engine is off at last data instance + 30 seconds. This is reported if the engine is on and not idling.
Engine on Time (auxiliary)
- Engine on Time is Idling + Engine run (Driving Time)
- Engine on Time is normally greater than Driving Time
Report Structure
The main view of the report (accessed through the Dashboard by clicking on Fleet > Eco-Driving / Driver Efficiency) consists of the:
- Summary panel
- Trends panel
- Main table
Summary panel
By default, the Summary panel gives an overview of the whole organization. The Summary panel is affected by the tags and the timeframe selected using the Calendar Tool. It is available for the 0-100 score view and A-G letter grade view for Europe and is available only in the 0-100 score view for the US and Americas.
Trends panel
If one day is selected using the Calendar Tool, the user will get a zoom-in on the Trends panel and will get a view of parameters every few hours.
A user can also select and plot the individual parameters on the graph to see which one has affected the overall score the most.
Tags can be selected for the Trends panel. Depending on the tags, the mix of vehicles included in the trendline will change.
Main table
There are two tabs available in the Main table view: the Drivers and Vehicles tabs.
Sometimes, similarly to our Trip History Report, there will be “unassigned” raw data; such data would refer to either unassigned trip segments or unfinished trip segments.
A user can download the data from the Main table as a CSV file or create a Scheduled Report:
How the Configurations Work
Configurations can be made on the Dashboard under Settings > Fuel & Energy > Eco-Driving (Europe) / Driver Efficiency (US and Americas).
Eco-Driving / Driver Efficiency Score Weights
Set relative weights of different driver behavior parameters; weights would affect the relative contribution of a parameter to an overall score.
For example, selecting a weight of 1 for Green Band and 10 for Coasting would mean that the Coasting parameter contribution to the overall score will be 10 times higher than that of Green Band’s. 1 to 10 weights are converted automatically into percentages summing up to one hundred.
Example: Coasting is assigned a weight of 10 and Green Band a weight of 1 and they are automatically converted to respective percentage weights (~91% and 9%).
The user can turn a parameter off completely by selecting off on the toggle. This would remove the parameter from consideration in the overall score and will remove it from the main report.
For Over Speeding, one might configure a speed threshold that works the best for their organization and is different from the legal speed limit.
Default Values for Weights
There is a button to restore the default values that were available before they were changed.
Default Values:
- Europe: All parameters enabled with equal weights of 5 (or ~14%)
- US and Americas: Over Speed and Idling with the weight of 5 (or 50% each). Other parameters are off but can be enabled by the user
- Speed threshold of 80 KMH / 50 MPH. This is the recommended max speed above which the fuel efficiency decreases (Source: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/driveHabits.jsp)
- We recommend that these values be adjusted to reflect a target maximum for your drivers which would depend on the specific vehicles they drive
Eco-Driving / Driver Efficiency 0-100 Score Mapping
Score mapping allows users to define what percentages are mapped to 0 and a 100 score. We have designed the 0-100 scores so that 0 for all of the parameters corresponds to really bad and 100 to really good performance, whilst values in between are linear.
For Cruise Control, Coasting (any gear) and Green Band (direct parameters - the more time spent in them, the better, thresholds for Low Score (0) correspond to the percentage value to map to a score of 0 (worst). Anything below the threshold will be a 0. Thresholds for High Score (100) correspond to the percentage value to map to a score of 100 (best). Anything above the threshold will also be a 100.
Values in between the threshold values are mapped linearly.
Example: With the default Cruise Control settings of 0 corresponding to 1% and 100 corresponding to 61%, 55% (close to the threshold of 61%) of time in cruise control would map to score of 90 (close to 100). 5% of the time in Cruise Control (close to the threshold of 1%) will map to a score of 7 (close to 0).
For High Torque, Anticipation, Idling, Over Speed (inverse parameters - the more time spent in them, the worse) thresholds for Low Score (0) correspond to the percentage value to map to a score of 0 (worst). Anything above (since the parameter is inverse) the threshold will be a 0. Thresholds for High Score (100) correspond to the percentage value to map to a score of 100 (best). Anything below (since the parameter is inverse) the threshold will also be a 100.
Values in between the threshold values are mapped linearly.
Example: With the default anticipation settings of 0 corresponding to 26% and 100 corresponding to 7%, 24% (close to the threshold of 26%) of anticipation would map to a score of 11 (close to 0). 10% of the time in Cruise Control (close to the threshold of 7%) will map to a score of 84 (close to 100).
Default Values for Score Mapping
There is a button to restore the default values that were available before they were changed.
The default values were calculated for 0 to reflect the bottom 10% of Samsara drivers and 100 to reflect the top 10% drivers (with exception of Idling) and are:
| Parameter | Low score (0) | High score (100) |
| Cruise Control | 1% | 61% |
| Coasting (any gear) | 2% | 10% |
| Green Band | 48% | 84% |
| High Torque | 8% | 1% |
| Anticipation | 26% | 7% |
| Idling | 100% | 0% |
| Over Speed (based on 55 MPH) | 70% | 5% |
We recommend that these values be adjusted to better reflect the driving style of your fleet.
Data Views Available
Data view available:
- Raw data
- Percentages
- 0-100 score
- A-G letter grades (Europe only)
Raw data
Raw data is the most fundamental view - for most parameters, it is the amount of time spent in a certain style of driving. The only exception is Anticipation - for Anticipation, the raw data is just a count of abrupt braking events.
Percentages
Percentages view is the raw data normalized, depending on the parameter, either to Engine on Time or Driving Time, or the number of braking events. For the exact definition, please see Parameters.
0-100 score
0-100 score is percentages made meaningful. For every parameter in the form of 0-100 score, 0 corresponds to bad performance and 100 corresponds to good performance. For details, please see How the Configurations Work.
A-G letter grades (Europe only)
0-100 scores are uniformly mapped to the A-G letter grades:
| Letter grade | From | To |
| A | 86 | 100 |
| B | 71 | 86 |
| C | 57 | 71 |
| D | 43 | 57 |
| E | 29 | 43 |
| F | 14 | 29 |
| G | 0 | 14 |
Vehicle Types Supported
More OBD vehicle parameters coming soon.
The report currently displays OBD vehicles - usually light commercial and passenger vehicles - only if the user selects one or both of Over Speed and Idling on the Configurations screen and set the weights of other parameters to zero.
If any other parameters have non-zero weights, then only vehicles that comply with the J1939 diagnostics standard are shown - typically heavy trucks and some commercial vans.
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