As part of the ELS project, a system was developed to support energy savings in the operation of regional rail transport systems. The project goal was the economic and ecological improvement of the scheduled operations.

The new technology should enable energy-optimised braking, acceleration and drive-up procedures while ensuring adherence to the timetable. In order to achieve this goal, all information on the energy demand of the vehicle as well as the available traffic data from the control centre were automatically collected and processed into driving recommendations in real time. Additional optimisations were made to the resumption strategies after disruptions in the operational process.

During the system development, HFC dealt with the specification of the standard operating functions and the design of the human-machine interface for two components: the central system component in the control centre (EcoC) offered assistance to the dispatcher during incident management. The mobile component (EcoM) was installed in the vehicles and supported the drivers particularly in the implementation of an energy-saving driving style.

The project was funded by TSB (Technologiestiftung Berlin) from the Future Fund of the State of Berlin, co-financed by the European Union - European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).