With the num­ber of con­nected cars grow­ing rapidly — some esti­mate that1/2 the cars sold in 2015 will have Inter­net con­nec­tion, can Autonomous vehi­cles be far behind?

Autonomous vehi­cles may not be on your selec­tor list next year, or the year after that, and so on, but they are recently gen­er­at­ing new projects, new reg­u­la­tions and plenty of news. Inter­est in con­nected cars has been build­ing slowly over the years. Ini­tial appli­ca­tions included enter­tain­ment, nav­i­ga­tion, and traf­fic infor­ma­tion. The big pay­off for con­nected cars has always been autonomous dri­ving — allow­ing a dri­ver to climb in, open her news­pa­per or tablet, or even make phone calls, and be dri­ven safely — and effi­ciently — to her des­ti­na­tion thanks to the “Vehi­cle Traf­fic Con­trol System.”

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If new fuels or tech­nol­ogy do not yield a real ROI, the chance of wide­spread adop­tion is poor. Break­out ses­sion will tell how fleets and fleet man­age­ment com­pa­nies are quan­ti­fy­ing the costs and benefits.

ARI will host a break­out ses­sion at this week’s Green Truck Sum­mit dur­ing the NTEA Work Truck Show in Indi­anapo­lis. Brian Matuszewski, man­ager of sus­tain­able strate­gies for ARI, and Gregg Hodg­don, direc­tor of fleet oper­a­tions for The E.A. Sween Com­pany, will explore the ROI of alter­na­tive fuels and green technology.

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There tends to be two types of car own­ers in this world, those who want their cars to run as long as they can, and those who antic­i­pate switch­ing cars every 2–5 years and care less about see­ing the odome­ter hit six figures.

“Many of today’s car own­ers like to see how far they can take their cars, whether it be for finan­cial rea­sons or based on prin­ci­ple,” Phong Ly, co-founder and CEO of iSeeCars.com said. “And, unlike many cars from the 20^th cen­tury, there are a vari­ety of vehi­cles built these days that are made to – and will – go the distance.”

iSeeCars.com decided to see which cars are stand­ing the test of time by doing an analy­sis of 30 mil­lion cars for sale. The study did have some sur­pris­ing results for long-lasting makes and models.

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Nav­i­gat­ing while dri­ving and other smart phone uses not pro­hib­ited by law

A Cal­i­for­nia Appel­late court over­turned a traf­fic ticket issued to dri­ver using his smart­phone to find an alter­nate route. Accord­ing to the rul­ing, the Cal­i­for­nia law nar­rowly pro­hib­ited the use of the phone for talk­ing and tex­ting, but not merely con­sult­ing the device. Like other states, Cal­i­for­nia only per­mits hand free use of phones.

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The eighth annual Ste­vie Awards for Sales & Cus­tomer Ser­vice were pre­sented to hon­orees dur­ing a gala ban­quet on Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 21 at the Bel­la­gio in Las Vegas. ARI received a bronze award in the Cus­tomer Ser­vice Train­ing Team of the Year Category.

“I am very proud of our train­ing team, who gen­uinely deserve this recog­ni­tion,” said ARI Vice Pres­i­dent of Call Cen­ter Oper­a­tions, Ted Davis. “The suc­cess of our call cen­ter train­ing pro­gram is due in no small part to the hard work, ded­i­ca­tion and will­ing­ness of our team to share their knowl­edge and exper­tise with our new tech­ni­cians, which has helped to ele­vate the per­for­mance of our call cen­ters to industry-leading lev­els. I want to con­grat­u­late every mem­ber of the team for their out­stand­ing efforts.”

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WEX, Inc. pur­chased instru­ments on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014 to cover a por­tion of its antic­i­pated domes­tic fuel-price-related earn­ings expo­sure for the first, sec­ond and third quar­ters of 2015.

The Feb­ru­ary pur­chase locked in a fuel price range of approx­i­mately $3.39 to $3.45 per gallon.

At this time, WEX has hedged approx­i­mately 60% of its first quar­ter 2015 expo­sure, 40% of its sec­ond quar­ter and 20% of its third quar­ter 2015 exposure.

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In 2010, the world’s lead­ing eye­wear com­pany, Lux­ot­tica, chose Arval when it switched from company-owned fleets in each coun­try to a global, full-service leas­ing car pol­icy. The deci­sion quickly proved its merit by yield­ing ben­e­fits that included reduced fleet costs to greater man­age­ment con­trol in lit­tle more than a year after it was implemented.

Mobil­ity is a vital part of Luxottica’s busi­ness, both for its man­agers, as well as its sales and mar­ket­ing staff, who work with a vast net­work of retail out­lets. Lux­ot­tica is the world’s largest eye­wear man­u­fac­turer. Until 2010, Luxottica’s sub­sidiaries pur­chased their own fleet vehi­cles, with man­agers able to choose any brand up to a max­i­mum list price.

Then, Lux­ot­tica turned to inter­na­tional full-service leas­ing with Arval.

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Learn how alter­na­tive fuels can lower your fuel costs 20% to 50%! Reserve your spot now to gain the insight and con­nec­tions needed to cre­ate your clean fleet plan.

As petro­leum fuel prices surge, fleet reg­is­tra­tions for the 2014 Alter­na­tive Clean Trans­porta­tion (ACT) Expo are pour­ing in. If you are look­ing for ways to lower your fleet’s fuel costs, you will want to be in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia, May 5–8 at North America’s largest clean fleet show to learn from lead­ing pub­lic and pri­vate fleet oper­a­tors how to reduce fuel costs and emis­sions using alter­na­tive fuels—including elec­tric, hybrid, hydro­gen, nat­ural gas, propane auto­gas, and renew­able fuels.

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NADA Used Car Guide’s lat­est “Per­spec­tive” spe­cial report digs into what’s been hap­pen­ing lately with pas­sen­ger car reten­tion. Sub­com­pact cars have depre­ci­ated the least of any main­stream seg­ment dur­ing the review period, earn­ing an over­all reten­tion score of 54.4%. The Honda Fit had an aver­age reten­tion rat­ing of 62.7%, fol­lowed by the Scion xB, and the Kia Soul, which aver­aged 60.6% and 60.1%, respectively.

Here’s NADA Reten­tion Review: Pas­sen­ger Cars

Sub­aru Impreza Had High­est Reten­tion of Any Vehi­cle at 63.5%:
Sub­aru and Lexus each won top spots on two of the vehi­cle seg­ment categories.

Lexus IS Took Lux­ury Car Seg­ment at 57.8% Reten­tion:
Fol­lowed by BMW 5 Series at 54.5%, and Audi A4 at 54.3%.

In Hybrid Cat­e­gory, Lexus CT Led at 62.4% and Toy­ota Prius Fol­lowed at 54.3%:
Buy­ers trust Toyota’s hybrid tech­nol­ogy – it’s no sur­prise to see two of their cars at top.