e durations of regeneration operations are often required to be in the minutes range however dynamic changes in the engine operating state normally occur with significantly lower time constants in order to be able to completely perform regenerations or to prevent critical system states the information relating to the travel distance is suitably selected with foresight in doing so the information from global positioning system 30 traffic telematics system 20 or a travel distance computer or the like for control device 10 for example of an engine control unit is routed in suitable form for example via a can bus and transferred in this form in this connection it is not absolutely necessary to transfer the complete information for example information concerning the permissibility of the corresponding regeneration measures is sufficient for example as shown in fig2 the transfer may be made in the form of a bit string 11 relating to the information of global positioning system 30 and or a bit string 12 relating to the information of traffic telematics system 20 for example a bit string 11 for the gps information and a bit string 12 for the information of the traffic telematics are conceivable if necessary these two bit strings 11 12 are logically linked in control device 10 or the engine control unit by a corresponding logic unit 13 if a truth.