As a Senior Global Account Man­ager at Wheels, Scott Singskank works with both the Account Man­ager and the client to help under­stand each client’s needs on a global level.

He then devel­ops an ongo­ing pro­gram that will achieve those goals and mea­sure over­all success.

With a deep knowl­edge of the fleet indus­try, Scott under­stands the impor­tance of good cus­tomer ser­vice, project man­age­ment and strate­gic con­sult­ing. He is focused on help­ing fleets reach their goals, whether it’s man­ag­ing costs or increas­ing productivity.

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Bob John­son is direc­tor of fleet rela­tions at NTEA – the Asso­ci­a­tion for the Work Truck Indus­try. When we asked him to tell us about con­cerns that fleets are rais­ing with him, he said, “The indus­try has lit­er­ally seen hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent sus­tain­able tech­nolo­gies intro­duced in the last few years. The big issue with fleets is: How can those tech­nolo­gies ben­e­fit me and how can I select the cor­rect tech­nol­ogy for my application?

“We have done a lot of work in that area, pro­vid­ing a means for the end users to under­stand what the dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies are and how they can be implemented.”

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The num­ber of prob­lems expe­ri­enced by new-vehicle own­ers has increased from the pre­vi­ous year, as automak­ers con­tin­ued to be chal­lenged when intro­duc­ing sophis­ti­cated tech­nolo­gies in new vehi­cles, accord­ing to the J.D. Power 2014 U.S. Ini­tial Qual­ity StudySM (IQS) released last week.

The study finds that over­all ini­tial qual­ity aver­ages 116 PP100, a 3 per­cent increase in prob­lems from 113 PP100 in 2013. This year’s increase in prob­lems fol­lows a sim­i­lar increase found in the J.D. Power U.S. 2014 Vehi­cle Depend­abil­ity Study (VDS) released in Feb­ru­ary, which mea­sures prob­lems expe­ri­enced after three years of ownership.

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The offi­cial start of sum­mer was this past Sat­ur­day, June 21, when most every­one hits the road for vaca­tions and other sun-filled trips. But before you pack up the car and take to the high­way, make sure you don’t make these mis­takes that could either be dan­ger­ous or cost you time and money.

• Not hav­ing a plan. Before you head out, have a route in mind and be aware of obsta­cles such as heavy traf­fic or sum­mer con­struc­tion. Plan in some well-thought-out detours so you don’t go through major cities dur­ing rush hour and avoid wast­ing time. Have a GPS or cell phone map app avail­able, but remem­ber to pro­gram them while you’re not dri­ving to avoid distractions.

READ MORE for the remain­ing tips.

Ford is intro­duc­ing an all-new inflat­able airbag restraint design that pro­vides the front seat pas­sen­ger with knee airbag pro­tec­tion while sig­nif­i­cantly reduc­ing sys­tem size and weight.

It’s the first pas­sen­ger knee airbag pack­aged inside the glove box door. The result­ing design is 65% lighter with an infla­tor that is approx­i­mately 75% smaller than a con­ven­tional knee airbag inflator.

Since the glove box-integrated airbag extends straight out from the instru­ment panel, it doesn’t have to travel as far as a con­ven­tional airbag, which deploys toward the floor before curv­ing upward.

The new airbag will be intro­duced later this year as part of a stan­dard com­pre­hen­sive safety sys­tem that includes a more robust pack­age of sen­sors, safety belt anchor pre­ten­sion­ers, improved exte­rior light­ing and dou­ble the total num­ber of airbags on the all-new 2015 Ford Mustang.

READ MORE to learn about another Ford offering.

Honda and Acura each won the top prize in Edmunds’ Best Retained Value Awards – with each win­ning for the third time since the awards were launched in 2011. Honda’s non-luxury vehi­cle award is based on a pro­jected 50.1% resid­ual value after five years, and Acura’s lux­ury award is based on a 45.4% resid­ual after that same time period. It’s based on aver­age “cash” True Mar­ket Value (TMV) pric­ing dur­ing a vehicle’s first five months in the market.

Here’s a provoca­tive thought: In two years, “Tesla Motors has trans­formed [itself] from fledg­ling start-up to arguably the most impor­tant car com­pany in the world.” That’s from Adam Jonas, a Mor­gan Stan­ley ana­lyst. He felt com­pelled to add, how­ever, that “We are not joking.”

In his report in the Los Ange­les Times, he spelled out his reasons:

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Hot weather actu­ally can reduce your fuel con­sump­tion – at least if you fol­low some basic tips.

“Under very hot con­di­tions, AC can reduce a con­ven­tional vehicle’s fuel econ­omy by more than 25%,” notes new guide­lines posted on Fueleconomy.gov. The impact of run­ning your air con­di­tion­ing in a hybrid, plug-in or battery-electric vehi­cle “can be even larger on a per­cent­age basis,” it notes.

In the days before AC , you’d likely keep your win­dows open while dri­ving on a hot day. Today’s vehi­cles are designed to max­i­mize aero­dy­nam­ics and the added drag of leav­ing your win­dow open is likely to use more fuel than run­ning your AC.

READ MORE to get the tips.

Global fleet and leas­ing soft­ware solu­tions provider, Sofico, has intro­duced a new autonomous, regional-focused struc­ture to get closer to its cus­tomers as well as under­pin­ning its con­tin­ued expansion.

The Belgian-based busi­ness, whose soft­ware man­ages over one mil­lion fleet vehi­cles world­wide, will now revolve around seven regional units, backed by a series of process-specific sup­port units.

Jan Bouck­aert, Head of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at Sofico, said: “Our cus­tomers will now have a spe­cific team ded­i­cated to them, while our staff can build up a more detailed knowl­edge of each customer’s mar­ket specifics and the way they cus­tomize Miles to run their fleet.”

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