Leo Barros: Telematics play an important role in helping fleets attain and improve sustainability targets. trucknews.com chatted with Jacques DeLarochelliere, CEO, chairman and co-founder of Isaac and JS Bouchard, the company’s chief product officer and co-founder. So how can telematics contribute to a fleet’s sustainability goals?

JS Bouchard: So, in terms of fuel efficiency, I think Jacques made a great comment this morning about like the Isaac coach and how it can be used by fleets. How much work like Isaac coach in 2017 was new. Today, like we have customers that have racked up like years of data on a huge volume of trucks.

Jacques DeLarochelliere: Millions of miles.

Bouchard: Millions of miles. Now when you look back and we’re looking at, oh my God, look at all the fuel they’ve saved. Now it’s not just like one test on a proving ground, it’s volume of data that’s demonstrating the savings. And it’s hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel that’s being saved every year.

And we’re talking about technologies and diesel engines that are out there rolling and delivering freight every day. So, to me, the sustainability part with this tool is huge.

DeLarochelliere: An increase of 10% on the Isaac score coach, which is not impossible. It’s rather easy to do is from 4.5% fuel savings. That’s huge.

Barros: That’s huge as well.

DeLarochelliere: That’s applicable today with today’s trucks. Those are fuel efficient.

Barros: How important is the driver in terms of sustainability? How can in cab coaching make drivers more fuel efficient?

Bouchard: Yeah, well, saw right from that same example. So, the driver improves his behavior by 10% on the Isaac Coach score and that generates 4.5% fuel efficiency.

To get a good result from the Isaac Coach and save on fuel consumption, the driver must follow the indications displayed in green, yellow, and red on his tablet.

The Isaac Coach takes into account the truck’s aerodynamics and load, as well as the slope and wind to guide the driver. All thanks to the processing of more than 70 parameters up to 200 times per second.

The indicators displayed on the tablet will vary according to those factors. Let’s consider, for example, a truck traveling on level ground. Here, the Isaac Coach allows the driver to press down on the accelerator pedal to a certain extent. However, when traveling up a slope, the driver may apply more pressure on the accelerator pedal than on flat terrain without being penalized.

During a descent, the driver must release the accelerator pedal to keep the indicator green on his tablet.

Back on level ground, the driver can press down harder on the accelerator pedal.

With the headwind now in play, the Isaac Coach allows for even more pressure on the accelerator than when there was no weight. Finally, after the truck’s load is lightened, the driver must travel using less pressure on the accelerator pedal than when hauling a heavier load. Here is the detailed list of indicators displayed on the tablet and what they mean. The circles displayed on the tablet indicate to the driver the actual pressure being applied on the accelerator pedal versus the tolerated maximum.

Three empty green circles mean the driver can step further down on the accelerator pedal. The circles begin to fill one by one, and the progression tells the driver he’s approaching the maximum tolerated pressure on the pedal. Three yellow circles mean he’ll very soon reach the limit not to exceed, in order to maintain good results with the Isaac Coach. The word accel, displayed in red, indicates to the driver he must release pressure on the accelerator pedal.

Bouchard: And when we take the safety component, which we have not approached today, there’s a study from the Traffic Injury Research Foundation have demonstrated that one percent improvement in the Isaac Coach score reduces the risk of an accident by four percent because when you think about it, when a driver progressively accelerates and anticipates, he’s doing safe behaviors at the same time. He’s tailgating less, he’s more proactive with the traffic in front of him. So, to see a correlation between fuel saving and safety, we all knew it existed. What TIRF has done is really demonstrated it out of any doubt.

DeLarochelliere: Totally independent. We didn’t call for it. And it was two fleets with Isaac, one fleet without for a baseline. And that’s what it did.

Barros: Do you find fleet customers are using the data that you collect for them to tell their sustainability stories to their customers?

DeLarochelliere: Oh, it’s becoming it’s becoming a rule. I mean, it’s something that you want to measure going forward. So, there’s government initiatives where you want to demonstrate your own impact on the environment, but your clients who you carry goods need to demonstrate their secondary impact. So that’s part of the measurement that we provide.