Version 2.2.4 available

Monday 4th March 2013
Posted by: simon

A new version of the DriveGain and Fueless applications are now available on the AppStore. New in this version:

• Fixes a problem in the Fuel Savings screen where the Braking and Speed sliders were fixed at 100% all the time
• Fixes a problem where Vauxhall Corsa 2006 models onwards were not loading correctly

Version 2.2.3 available

Tuesday 18th December 2012
Posted by: simon

A new version of the DriveGain and Fueless applications are now available on the AppStore. New in this version:

• New 2012 vehicles have been added to the vehicle database

Version 2.2.2 available

Friday 21st September 2012
Posted by: simon

A new version of the DriveGain and Fueless applications are now available on the AppStore. New in this version:

• Support added for iOS6
• Support added for the bigger screen in the iPhone 5
• A bug affecting the selection of a small number of vehicles has been fixed

Note that due to changes in the Apple developer tools the minimum supported OS version is now iOS 4.3. Unfortunately this means we have had to drop support for the iPhone 3G and the iPod Touch Gen 1 and 2 - those devices will now stay on the previous version (V2.2.1).

Version 2.2 available

Saturday 4th August 2012
Posted by: simon

A new version of the DriveGain and Fueless applications are now available on the AppStore.

This update contains a significant upgrade to the Vehicle Database which now has much more detailed data about vehicles, engines and transmissions. This allows the application to be more accurate when working out fuel consumption. Because we now need some extra information about your vehicles, you will need to reselect your vehicles from the database when you first re-start the app.

Reducing maximum speed to 60 MPH reduces fuel consumption by 10%, but only adds 2 minutes to journey time

Wednesday 27th June 2012
Posted by: simon

We have been analysing the 10,000 journeys uploaded to the DriveGain web portal over the last 9 months and have extracted some interesting trade-offs between speed, fuel used and arrival time.

Limiting your maximum speed to 60 MPH reduces your fuel consumption by 10%, but this only adds 2 minutes to the average journey time.

We find that drivers tend to over-estimate how much quicker they will arrive when driving faster. Unless the roads are totally clear, other traffic on your route will tend to slow you down considerably. When driving at higher speeds drivers tend to accelerate until they catch up with traffic ahead, at which point they brake to slow down, and this constant acceleration and braking cycle uses much more fuel than travelling at a constant speed.

The result is that drivers are using a lot of fuel for very little difference in their arrival time.

Even reducing the maximum journey speed to 70 MPH has real benefits: fuel consumption is reduced by 6% but journeys only take a minute longer on average.

A summary of the results is included below, or you can read the full results in our Fuel Consumption vs Arrival Time white paper (PDF).

The table below summarises DriveGain’s findings on the effects of restricting journeys to sets of speeds in MPH:

DriveGain analysis using restricted speeds in km/h

For countries that use metric speeds we repeated the process above with a set of speeds in km/h:

Version 2.1.2 available

Saturday 2nd June 2012
Posted by: simon

A new version of the DriveGain and Fueless applications are now available on the AppStore. New in this version:

• The audio feedback no longer stops any music playing in the background
• We have improved the data handling for the higher resolution GPS chipset in the iPhone 4 and 4S
• Some users were getting a crash when selecting a new vehicle due to a timing issue – this is now fixed

One DriveGain User Is Saving £560 / €640 / $540 A Year On Fuel

Tuesday 15th May 2012
Posted by: simon

One Dutch DriveGain user is saving £560 a year in fuel. Ed de Tollenaer started using DriveGain in April 2012 and since then has seen is fuel consumption fall by 24%.

"Before I started using DriveGain I was getting around 370 miles (600km) from each tank of fuel, but after using the application I am getting 490 miles (780km) from each tank".

"To get these savings I just followed the audio feedback and the visual displays the app gave me. Changing your driving style requires breaking some old driving habits so having the app constantly giving me encouraging feedback helps a lot".

At US fuel prices Ed would save $540 a year. In Europe the savings would be around €640 a year.

Version 2.1.1 available

Tuesday 3rd April 2012
Posted by: simon

A new version of the DriveGain and Fueless applications are now available on the AppStore. New in this version:

• Pressing the Stop button now takes you back to the vehicle selection screen. This allows you to stop the app recording another journey.
• The volume buttons were controlling the rigner volume in the app. Now fixed so that they control the system volume as in previous versions.
• Users who pin locked their device (running iOS 4.0 and above) were being signed out of website if the upload happened when the device was locked. Now fixed so the uploads work even when the device is pin locked.
• We have made some other changes to the website login system - so when upgrading to V2.1.1 you will be signed out of the website and will need to sign in again in More | Website Settings.
• A crash that was occuring occasionally on terminating app in non-multitasking devices has been fixed.
• A crash caused by system reclaiming memory in some circumstances has been fixed.
• A crash due to device going into Deep Sleep when locked has been fixed.

Journey list view updated

Tuesday 14th February 2012
Posted by: simon

We have updated the Journeys list view a bit:

• There is now a Valid column that shows if a given journey counts towards the best weekly score or not
• There is now a Details column that allows you to see more details about a given journey
• On the journey details page you can now delete a journey if required
• The details page shows the journey start and end points on a map

Version 2.1 Available

Thursday 9th February 2012
Posted by: simon

A new version of the DriveGain and Fueless applications are now available on the AppStore. New in this version:

• DriveGain now runs in the background (on devices that support multitasking) and carries on giving audio feedback - so you can run it alongside your favourite SatNav app
• For automatic cars the gear display now goes back to N when stationary (as it did in V1.x)
• If you are not signed in to the website a reminder now comes up in the info window on the driving screen
• The Vehice Database Dutch localisation has been improved
• The switch at the top of the Fuel Price screen is now labelled "Update manually" to make this clearer
• If device language was set to British English (rather than just English) the fuel price currency symbols were not displaying properly - this is now fixed
• The Reset button has been renamed Stop

Version 2.0.2 Available

Tuesday 15th November 2011
Posted by: simon

A new version of the DriveGain and Fueless applications are now available on the AppStore. New in this version:

• This release has been built with the iOS 5.0 SDK – there were some unexplained crashes some users were getting that we think were down to changes in iOS 5.0
• A few users were getting "push front into full buffer" errors – generally after quite a long time driving – now fixed
• Minor changes to wording of some Dutch audio feedback
• Data uploads were failing more frequently than they should (the app retries automatically so it may not have been very obvious) - now fixed
• Pressing on a menu item with a switch in it caused the display to show a sub menu – now fixed
• On upgrading from an old iPhone to a new one if there was journey data not yet uploaded this would stop uploads on the new phone – now fixed

Twitter and Facebook sharing now enabled

Friday 21st October 2011
Posted by: simon

You can now authorise the website to post messages on your Twitter or Facebook accounts about how well you have done in the last week.

If you have made the top 200 in any of your groups, the site will post one message with your best group position. If you are the highest climber in the group (and not in the top 10) it will post that instead.

The site will also post a message when you join a group.

To set this up go to your Twitter or Facebook account settings page.

Version 2.0.1 Available

Monday 10th October 2011
Posted by: simon

A new version of the DriveGain and Fueless applications are now available on the AppStore. New in this version:

• Opel cars have been added to the vehicle database
• We have added a whole set of new European 2011 cars to the database
• The Vehicle Database entry for Peugeot 107 was not quite correct
• Some Dutch translation issues fixed
• On the app being suspended for more than 2 minutes (by an incoming SMS or phone call) there was a bug that was causing some potentially random effects - now fixed
• Manually set fuel prices are now uploaded to the website
• If iPhone country was set to a country we do not support automatic fuel Price updates for this was occasionally causing a crash - now fixed
• The app now waits until the user has travelled 100m before giving a fuel efficiency figure - the initial figures were given at 50m but some users were finding the initially high figures confusing
• Some minor memory management fixes

DriveGain and Fueless: Version 2 Launch

Monday 26th September 2011
Posted by: simon

Today we have launched Version 2 of the DriveGain system.

We are also launching an app called Fueless (in the Netherlands only) for the Dutch New Driving Program Het Nieuwe Rijden. Fueless is a branded version of the DriveGain application.

Highlights of what is new in Version 2:

• The basic DriveGain app is now free (it was called CarEconomy before)
• The paid for version of DriveGain is now called DriveGain+
• The app now has 6 meters to display different types of feedback as you drive - these are available as upgrades in the free version of the app
• The app can be set to upload data to this website - allowing you to track your progress in saving fuel and also to compete with friends and colleagues
• The apps and website are now available in English and Dutch