eco:Drive, the Fiat in-car system that helps motorists save money and reduce exhaust emissions, has won another top industry honour. The high-tech system has taken the Fleet Environmental Award in the 2009 Fleet World Honours, presented on Thursday at London’s RAC Club. This is a special prize, the winner of which is decided by the Department of Transport’s Energy Saving Trust.

Launched by Fiat at the 2008 Paris Motor Show, eco:Drive is a free-of-charge tool that helps drivers understand the impact of their driving style on fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Using a USB stick plugged into the car’s dashboard, eco:Drive records detailed information about the vehicle and how it is driven, which can be uploaded on to a computer. It then gives an analysis of the driver’s performance, along with suggestions on how to improve efficiency even further by changing driving style. To date, more than 40,000 users have downloaded eco:Drive, and over 15,000 have joined the eco:Drive community, saving more than 910,000 kg of CO2.

“The winner of this award was nominated by the Energy Saving Trust, an organisation with an extensive overview of all environmental initiatives on the market,” says Fleet World editor Ken Rogers, one of the judges. “As such, Fiat can be justifiably proud of its achievement. The Fiat range is especially attractive to younger drivers and the eco:Drive programme will ensure that they form environmentally sound driving habits from an early age.”

“We are delighted with this recognition from a professional magazine such as Fleet World. eco:Drive is an innovative product that is proving very useful to both consumers and businesses, with the common goal of cutting costs and reducing emissions,” says Luis Cilimingras, Head of eco:Drive Project, Fiat. “Today real CO2 emissions are hard to measure – and things that are hard to measure are difficult to reduce. We are now working on a specific version of eco:Drive for B2B, which can monitor the CO2 emissions of a whole fleet and track progress on reduction, so we can give a tool to fleet managers and those responsible for CSR to make their job easier.”