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Vehicle engineering consultancy Lysanda has developed an emissions-monitoring system for commercial vehicles, which it hopes will have mass appeal to operators wanting to keep track of their carbon footprint.

The device, which is fitted in the engine bay rather than on the exhaust pipe, estimates the fuel used and the level of emissions produced (hydrocarbons, NOX, CO, PM and CO2). The information is produced on a kilometer by kilometer, real-time basis, and is transmitted back to the operator's  base via the vehicle's tracker. The driver gets a small in-cab display, but the amount of data available to him is at the operator's discretion.

Lysanda's commercial director Simon Harris, explains to MT that the product is likely to prove popular with companies such as TDG, Wincanton and M&S, all of which are making a conscious effort to reduce their carbon footprint. He says: "This allows them to accurately measure the emissions they are producing."

Harris explains that although the product won't be on the market until next spring, a pilot scheme is being planned with Tesco for later this year. "We plan to fit it to a 16-tonne rigid and maybe a van," he says.

According to Harris the potential market is huge, and he refers to Europe's 33 million truck parc. While he acknowledges that only a tiny percentage of these are currently fitted with trackers (which are required for Lysanda to piggyback), he says their popularity is increasing at a rate of 35%  per annum. "There are four main telematics providers in Europe," he says, "and we are talking to all of them".

Harris says that at a cost of a couple of hundred pounds per unit, the device is both cheaper and more accurate than the OEM's own telematics systems. Although having said that, Lysanda also hopes to sell its chip to the truck makers to use with their products.