Increasing Profits. Fleet managers “in the know” realize the importance of GPS. GPS-based logistics save hard dollars that go straight to the bottom line, and escalating fuel costs magnify the savings tremendously.

According to the Aberdeen Group, “Companies who use MRM (mobile resource management) services have seen a 19.2 percent reduction in miles traveled since using the service. This factor results in less fuel consumption, which represents nearly 98 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted into the environment.” Sal Dhanani, co-founder of TeleNav, says, “It is extremely important in today’s society that enterprises recognize ways they can reduce their carbon footprints.”

Consumers who use a personal navigation device (PND) in their daily travels are beginning to see the same benefits, although they may not have understood the advantage when they bought their location device. In a recent article, Jeremy Lakota makes the following point: “Did you know that getting a GPS device is another way to go green and help the environment? If you already have a GPS, pat yourself on the back, because your car is less cluttered with the wasted trees of printed directions. As you know, most online map services serve up lots of printed ads along with the directions, so what often times should be one page of printed directions usually ends up as two or three.”

Tracking units send data to fleet management headquarters.
Once analyzed, the data can help determine the most effective
ways to maximize vehicle performance and use fossil fuels
more efficiently.

It is easy to take for granted the extensive savings that can be found in one technology device, yet, in comparison to others, GPS stands out. Green activists have hailed GPS for its many saving graces, including:

• More efficient use of fossil fuels for commercial fleets; in the agriculture, marine, and aviation industries; in mass transit; and in consumer navigation
• Reducing waste by decreasing over-spread of fertilizers in farming; reducing use of paper products; and providing better management of insecticide spraying and wastewater and landfill sites
• Improving disaster management, including its use in monitoring of global sea-level conditions, hurricane and storm tracking, river- and stream-level monitoring, global weather forecasts, crustal deformation and earthquake monitoring, and pollution monitoring.

The list goes on and on. Each of the previous applications now takes fewer people, less bureaucracy, and fewer natural resources than it did before the age of GPS. It’s utterly green!

Fleet Management

GPS saves money for fleets in a variety of ways, according to Israel Ronn, general manager of Cellocator, the Products Division of Pointer Telocation Ltd. Pointer Telocation provides automatic vehicle location systems for fleet management, car and driver safety, public safety, road-side assistance, vehicle security, and asset management. “With tracking units equipped with sensors that send signals back to management headquarters at a consistent frequency, managers can measure a vehicle’s performance, including optimal speed, tire air pressure, and others factors that affect the use of gasoline,” Ronn said.

Another factor is driving the most precise and beneficial routes. “Since GPS tracking units allows managers to track every vehicle in their fleet at any given moment, they can study both driver behavior — whether he is driving safely, off-route, too fast or slow — and ensure that the most optimal behavior be insured for future travels,” Ronn said.

The rising problem of fuel theft can also be addressed through GPS tracking units that measure fuel levels, and can alarm the fleet manager accordingly. “The last half-year especially had seen an increasing interest in fuel sensors in the market,” Ronn noted.

One Caveat. No device that relies upon the Internet — as fleet management typically does for maps and data, and as do cell phones and differential correction services — or upon any form of computer server can claim to have a spotless green pedigree. There is growing concern about the environmental impact of Internet use, at both consumers’ PCs and industrial usage levels, consuming vast amounts of electricity (which equals energy) through the humongous data warehouses that house web servers. “The Internet is the fastest growing source of CO2 to the atmosphere . . . it doubled from 2002 to 2006,” according to a January 2008 report at NowPublic.com.

Kenneth Brill, executive director of the Uptime Institute, writes in Forbes that “IT energy consumption — and therefore its carbon footprint — exceeds virtually all other business functions by a factor of 20 to 40 (industry exceptions include mining, oil refining, and aluminum production).”

So we can take all our back-patting with a measure of salt, still knowing that GPS/PND use dramatically reduces fuel consumption and otherwise over-compensates for its net-dependence.
Actually, I wonder what the carbon footprint of a Delta II rocket is? At least we only launch three or so
a year, probaby 25 times that number for commercial communication payload launches.

I wonder how often carrier servers dish up a map as a percentage of their business? Even if you pay $9 per month for the service and you average a 20 percent decrease in gas use, it would mean for a car that can travel 400 miles on a tank holding 20 gallons (20 miles per gallon) you would save about 4 gallons per fill-up; 125,000 cars using GPS would save half a billion gallons of gas per each 400 miles driven.

One simple $100 GPS purchase could save the average user hundreds of dollars in a short time. Multiple GPS purchases for family members will generate savings per member based on their application needs, with even more benefits to come as live traffic updates become more common, routing us around jams.

Once activated, GPS will go to work and you will find yourself on the right side of saving this good ol’ whole Earth.

STEPHEN COLWELL is GPS World’s Mass Market OEM newsletter editor and a frequent contributor.