Driving Sustainability:
The Gamification of
Fuel Efficiency

Background

An EU-wide logistics company approached a consortium of partners with a clear goal: reduce the cost of running a commercial truck fleet at scale, and cut emissions in the process. Two cost drivers stood out. Fuel purchased at expensive highway stops when cheaper, contracted alternatives existed nearby, and driving behaviour itself, where habits like hard acceleration and late braking quietly compounded across hundreds of vehicles into significant waste.

3SStudio joined the project to own the driver-facing layer: the Android application truck drivers would actually see and use every day, deployed directly on their in-cab navigation units or on tablets in vehicles without integrated displays.

Two cost levers, one platform

The platform addressed both cost drivers in a single application. The first lever was a map of partner fuel network stations integrated into the truck's navigation experience. Drivers could see partner stations along their route and plan stops accordingly, moving purchasing away from premium highway locations and toward contracted alternatives. A straightforward nudge with meaningful cost implications at fleet scale.

The second lever was driving behaviour itself. Using the device's accelerometer and gyroscope, the platform continuously assessed how each driver operated their vehicle: smoothness of acceleration, braking patterns, cornering. This raw sensor data was translated into a personal sustainability score, paired with real-time coaching tips drivers could act on as they drove.

"Conscious sustainable driving behaviour is not only economically interesting, it saves valuable raw materials and reduces CO₂ emissions."

Making good driving personally rewarding

Coaching alone rarely changes behaviour. The platform paired the sustainability score with a points rewards mechanism: drivers who drove well earned points, which they could spend in an integrated shop. The connection between behaviour and reward was direct and immediate, giving drivers a personal reason to care about a metric that might otherwise feel abstract or imposed from above.

Rather than rebuilding loyalty mechanics from scratch, we contributed the rewards infrastructure already built and battle-tested through our Livemobility product, integrating it into the consortium platform. On top of that, the gamification layer added leaderboards and milestone recognition so drivers could see where they stood relative to peers and compete on fact-based performance data.

Deployed across two form factors

Not all trucks in the fleet had integrated navigation units. To ensure uniform coverage, the application ran on two delivery surfaces: embedded within the TomTom navigation systems already fitted in trucks that had them, and as a standalone Android tablet application for vehicles without integrated displays. The driver experience was consistent across both.

Truck drivers rising to the sustainable challenge

By making sustainable driving measurable, easy to understand, and tied directly to rewards, the product enabled drivers to achieve fuel savings of up to 20%. This is not a theoretical improvement, it is observed, driver-level behaviour change, delivered at scale across an EU-wide fleet.

The product won the "Logistics of the Year Award" for Sustainability and Environment in November 2019, recognising its positive impact on fuel efficiency and its contribution to sustainability goals within the logistics industry.