AutoblogGreen

So-called "Eco driving" lamps are nothing new in many cars, but somehow they have never been included in any Korean cars until now. Kia has just launched an updated version of the Optima sedan and it features a lamp that changes colors within the speedometer. In a post on the Kia Buzz blog, Hyun Jin Cho of the company's Sustainability Management Team discusses the techniques that drivers can use to save fuel. Most of these are pretty obvious but bear repeating such as go with the flow of traffic, avoid hard acceleration and check your tire pressures regularly. To help drivers achieve maximum fuel efficiency, Kia is adding the ECO lamp that glows red when you're driving too aggressively, white when driving in a typical fashion and green when ... well, you know what that means.

Kia recently did a test where they had 100 drivers take out ten of its cars on a four-mile loop. After the first loop, the drivers were shown how to take advantage of the ECO lamp and subsequently improved their fuel efficiency by 10-20 percent. It's nothing new but it certainly is worth repeating that that providing drivers with some feedback on their behavior can help to reduce fuel consumption.

[Source: Kia]