Fiat 500 eco:Drive system is a neat (if nerdy) way to green your driving habits

There are plenty of car man­u­fac­tur­ers boast­ing about the eco-​​credentials of their latest models these days. But I came across one this week­end which genu­inely impressed me.

The Fiat 500 is a funky little town car – it echoes the cute style queues of earlier Fiats with the same number back in the 1960s and early 70s.

All well and good. It’s cer­tainly a nice look­ing creation.

But what I think is a genu­inely smart innov­a­tion is the eco:Drive system that comes with latest models.

eco:Drive helps you under­stand the impact of your driv­ing style on fuel con­sump­tion and CO2 emis­sions. You just plug a USB stick into the port on the car’s dash­board and eco:Drive records detailed inform­a­tion about the vehicle and how it is driven onto the USB stick.

Then down­load the free eco:Drive soft­ware from Fiat’s web­site and install on your com­puter. Plug the USB stick into your com­puter and the eco:Drive soft­ware ana­lyses the data on it and con­verts it into useful facts and fig­ures. It gives you your ‘eco:Drive index’ – a mark out of 100 show­ing how effi­ciently you’ve been driv­ing based on your accel­er­a­tion, decel­er­a­tion, gear changes and speed. It then makes recom­mend­a­tions about how you can improve the effi­ciency of your driving.

It even provides inform­a­tion on how much money this could save you. And for the ser­i­ously obsess­ive it lets you set your­self tar­gets and see if you can meet them.

Fiat sug­gests you could reduce your fuel bills by up to 15%. That’s a big saving!

The soft­ware will evolve and improve with feed­back from users – auto­mat­ic­ally updat­ing as time goes on too.

A genu­inely bril­liant idea. My one cri­ti­cism is that it feels very blokey indeed – even a tad nerdy. At the risk of sound­ing sexist, I wonder if girl-​​drivers – who tend to be the more eco-​​friendly of the sexes when it comes to driv­ing and are prob­ably more likely to buy a small funky car like the Fiat 500 – would ever bother to use it?

IMAGES: by Flickr user

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• Fiat may pro­duce seven models in North Amer­ica, includ­ing Alfa Romeo: Report (wind​sor​star​.com)

Ori­gin­ally posted 2008-​​12-​​02 04:50:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Tags: Automobile, Automotive industry, Chrysler, ElectricVehicle, Fiat, Fiat 500, Recreation, United States
Posted in Cars, Energy | View Comments

What is Father’s Day? And why should we bother with it?

It’s Father’s Day on Sunday, and I’m feel­ing slightly con­flic­ted about how to cel­eb­rate it. Or whether to cel­eb­rate it. Isn’t it all a big mar­ket­ing con? Made up by Amer­ic­ans? Just designed to make us con­sume more? I don’t need to buy my dad a card (wast­ing more of the world’s pre­cious resources) just to let him know that I’m grate­ful he exists, do I?

I wouldn’t find all this quite so con­fus­ing were it not for the fact that when I con­sider my reac­tion to Mother’s Day – I feel quite dif­fer­ently. Yes, I know that it’s com­mer­cial­ised etc. etc. but the thought of not cel­eb­rat­ing it fills me with horror. Firstly because, as a mum myself, I know I’d be really sad if I didn’t get a card from my own daugh­ter, and secondly because, well, it’s Mother’s Day. It’s dif­fer­ent. Isn’t it?

You don’t have to be Pro­fessor Robert Win­ston to know that asking a child to choose a favour­ite between their mother and their father is a bit of a no-​​no when it comes to child psy­cho­logy. Could it pos­sibly be true that I just appre­ci­ate my mum a tiny bit more than my dad? I refuse to accept this con­clu­sion. So per­haps it is just that Father’s Day just doesn’t feel like a “proper” day. I need to do some research.

Where does Father’s Day come from?

The story accord­ing to Wiki­pe­dia (where all inter­net research seems to begin), is that the modern cel­eb­ra­tion of Father’s Day did begin in the USA in 1908.

“In West Vir­ginia, it was first cel­eb­rated as a church ser­vice at Wil­li­ams Memorial Meth­od­ist Epis­copal Church South, now known as Cent­ral United Meth­od­ist Church. Grace Golden Clayton, who is believed to have sug­ges­ted the ser­vice to the pastor, is believed to have been inspired to cel­eb­rate fath­ers after the deadly mine explo­sion in nearby Monongah the prior Decem­ber. This explo­sion killed 361 men, many of them fath­ers and recent immig­rants to the United States from Italy. Another pos­sible inspir­a­tion for the ser­vice was Moth­ers’ Day, which had been cel­eb­rated for the first time two months prior in Grafton, West Vir­ginia, a town about 15 miles (24 km) away.”

But it’s now cel­eb­rated in hun­dreds of coun­tries around the world – from March to Novem­ber. And in some coun­tries it’s not just about “fath­ers”. For example, in Ger­many, Her­rentag – “gentleman’s day” – is all about cel­eb­rat­ing everything man. And of course, it involves drink­ing and hiking. In Mozam­bi­que, Man’s Day isn’t an annual event but a weekly one.

Des­pite these inter­est­ing vari­ations, all my online research points to the fact that what we’ll be cel­eb­rat­ing this Sunday (or not) is an event inven­ted in the USA. But, the story is quite a sweet one, and doesn’t feel like a com­pletely bogus mar­ket­ing inven­tion. It’s got me feel­ing slightly dif­fer­ently about the day – but I’m still not convinced.

Are moth­ers more import­ant than fathers?

I move onto to some highly sci­entific quant­it­at­ive and qual­it­at­ive research to answer this next ques­tion. When I poll 50 or so of my col­leagues and friends, asking: “How do you cel­eb­rate father’s /​ mother’s day?” I dis­cover that just over half of them cel­eb­rate both. A third only cel­eb­rate Mother’s Day and the rest stay out of either. Not a single one of them said that they would only cel­eb­rate Father’s Day. The sub­ject stirs up plenty of debate when I ask if this is because we prefer our Mas to our Pas. One col­league points out: “Surely it just depends on what role/​importance they have (had) on your life. I only cel­eb­rate mother’s day as my par­ents sep­ar­ated when I was a young ‘un. Neither my dad or my step mum had any role in my upbring­ing so why should I give into another com­mer­cially pro­moted ‘tradition’?”

For another it’s much more straight­for­ward: “I don’t cel­eb­rate Father’s Day because I always thought it was an Amer­ican thing.”

Cut to the chase and give me some Father’s Day ideas

So, I’m no closer to making a decision – though I do plan to tell my dad how much I love and appre­ci­ate him very soon. If it hap­pens to be on Sunday, and that mes­sage comes writ­ten in a card, is it really such a bad thing?

In the mean time, if you’re look­ing for ideas for ways to be nice to your dad that don’t line the pock­ets of card companies:

• You could do worse than start with this very useful list from Mash​able​.com.
• Or put up a pictorial big-​​up to the old man like this Flickr user has.
• Or a video spe­cially made for dad?
• Of course, as with any other spe­cial event or occa­sion, e-​​cards are a great way to spread the love without cut­ting down trees.

Or maybe a just big hug would suffice?

IMAGE by Flickr user ShutterSparks

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• Moth­ers, fath­ers, sons and daugh­ters (anchor​mast​.com)
• Fath­ers Day (small​town​moun​tain​boy​.blog​spot​.com)
• Black fath­ers urged over chil­dren (news​.bbc​.co​.uk)

Ori­gin­ally posted 2008-​​06-​​10 05:33:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Tags: Family, Father, Fathers Day, Holidays, Home, Mother's Day, United States, West Virginia
Posted in Lifestyle | View Comments