A method is provided for operating a vehicle having a drive unit, a driving-data determination unit, a consumer set, and a power management unit for managing the consumer set. The driving-data determination unit identifies or determines driving curve data and the drive unit is controlled on the basis of the driving curve data. The method achieves an optimization with regard to a defined quality criterion while also taking the consumer set into account, in that the power management unit receives consumer data from the consumer set, the power management unit determines anticipatory load profile data at least on the basis of the consumer data, determination or identification data are transmitted to the driving-data determination unit in accordance with the load profile data, and the driving-data determination unit determines or identifies the driving curve data in accordance with the determination data.

A method for maintenance of a permanent way, roadway or travel path for rail vehicles includes determining the actual condition of the permanent way by using a measuring system to record measurement data. Objects along the permanent way are detected from the measurement data by using an evaluation device. A detected object is assigned to an object class, and at least one object class identification linked with positional data is stored in a database for a detected object. The actual condition of the permanent way is thus stored in an object-based manner, and a comparison with a target condition or with historic actual conditions is used for the planning and execution of maintenance measures. A maintenance system for executing the method is also provided.