Michele Cun­ning­ham is Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Strate­gic Devel­op­ment, at PHH Arval. She is respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing the company’s “go-to-market” strat­egy, with respon­si­bil­ity for Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Sales Oper­a­tion and Admin­is­tra­tion, and man­age­ment of the PHH Arval Global Alliance. Michele also serves as Vice Chair of the Edi­to­r­ial Advi­sory Coun­cil at NAFA Fleet Man­age­ment Association.

In this inter­view, Michele talks about the company’s recent expan­sion into mate­r­ial han­dling equip­ment and the excep­tional value that brings to vehi­cle fleet cus­tomers who man­age this equip­ment. We also ask for her insight into the grow­ing role of telem­at­ics data in fleet automization.

READ MORE

By Bruce Horan, Direc­tor, PHH Onboard®

New research shows that 20 per­cent of the North Amer­i­can fleet mar­ket has imple­mented telem­at­ics. While that num­ber may seem low for a tech­nol­ogy that’s been in the mar­ket for over 10 years, I believe it will dou­ble to 40 per­cent, reach­ing crit­i­cal mass, rel­a­tively soon. Today, cus­tomers are empow­ered when they see telem­at­ics as a viable tool to gain deeper insight and vis­i­bil­ity into fleet oper­a­tions and to make strate­gic busi­ness deci­sions that go well beyond GPS track­ing and vehi­cle rout­ing. It enables com­pa­nies to enhance their fleets’ per­for­mance and value. In fact, telem­at­ics is becom­ing increas­ingly tied to logis­tics through­out the sup­ply chain.

READ MORE

By Mike Sheldrick, Senior Editor

GE Capital’s annual sur­vey of middle-market com­pa­nies — those with sales between $10 mil­lion to $1 bil­lion — found a gen­er­ally con­fi­dent out­look. As a result, they plan to expand their fleets and their use of alternative-fuel vehi­cles. The 400+ respon­dents included com­pa­nies with local, national, and global reach. The major­ity of the com­pa­nies sur­veyed were pri­vate — only 11% were public.

Over 25% plan to increase the size of their fleet in the com­ing year, and more than half plan to incor­po­rate alternative-fuel vehi­cles in their fleet in the same period. And the switch to AFVs is even more pro­nounced: in the next two years, nearly two-thirds plan on adding AFVs and within five years, over 90%.

READ MORE

Sen. Jay Rock­e­feller, D-W.Va., chair­man of the Sen­ate Com­merce Com­mit­tee intro­duced the Motor Vehi­cle Safety Act of 2014 that would give the National High­way Traf­fic Safety Admin­is­tra­tion more fund­ing to con­duct more inves­ti­ga­tions and stronger pow­ers to get unsafe vehi­cles off the road more quickly. It would boost fund­ing for fed­eral auto safety over­sight by more than $100 mil­lion to $280 mil­lion by 2017.

“If NHTSA doesn’t have the resources or capa­bil­i­ties to pro­tect the dri­ving pub­lic and ful­fill its mis­sion, then Con­gress must step in and give this agency what it needs to meet these crit­i­cally impor­tant goals,” Rock­e­feller said. “For the past 15 years many of us have attempted to bol­ster NHTSA’s author­ity, pre­cisely to bet­ter pre­vent tragedies like the deaths caused by GM’s faulty igni­tion switches.

READ MORE

The next-generation 2015 Ford Edge has been unveiled. The crossover moves to a new plat­form that also under­pins the lat­est Ford Fusion and gains an all-new sus­pen­sion, two new engines and a host of safety and con­ve­nience fea­tures to make the mid­size SUV one very tech­no­log­i­cally advanced fam­ily vehicle.

The Edge is now a global vehi­cle for Ford and will be sold not only in North Amer­ica but China and Europe too. It’s been fully inte­grated into Ford’s global design lan­guage for 2015. The new model doesn’t move the styling nee­dle at all for the brand, but puts the new stan­dard Ford face on the SUV.

READ MORE for the details.

The 2015 Ram Pro­Mas­ter City has been unveiled to help Chrysler grab a piece of a grow­ing mar­ket shared by rivals Ford Motor Co., Nis­san Motor Co. and Gen­eral Motors Co.

“As busi­nesses strive for lower costs, the demand for a smaller, more effi­cient van has increased and Ram Com­mer­cial is answer­ing the bell with the all-new Pro­Mas­ter City,” said Reid Bigland, pres­i­dent and CEO, Ram Truck brand. Bigland said the Pro­Mas­ter has reached about 15 per­cent of the retail mar­ket and he expects to ramp up production.

READ MORE 

It may seem like increas­ing your fleet size will help your busi­ness be more pro­duc­tive, but it is not always the case. Adding unnec­es­sary vehi­cles can actu­ally make your fleet less pro­duc­tive and add unneeded busi­ness expenses. Advanced GPS track­ing solu­tions, like GPS Insight, will help you build a qual­ity fleet of the best vehi­cles to increase productivity.

READ MORE

Ford’s Project Mobii is an exper­i­men­tal new app-based ser­vice that would allow an owner to remotely mon­i­tor what’s hap­pen­ing inside their vehi­cle, using five sep­a­rate cam­eras mounted inside the pas­sen­ger compartment.

Among other things, it might allow par­ents to keep an eye on a teenage dri­ver. And the sys­tem could be pro­grammed to block a thief from hotwiring the igni­tion and dri­ving away — per­haps even qui­etly send­ing an alert to the police. There’s also the pos­si­bil­ity that Ford could use the Mobii tech­nol­ogy to bet­ter under­stand how motorists use its vehicles.

READ MORE

The way new-vehicle buy­ers per­ceive qual­ity has changed, and as a result, J.D. Power has changed how it mea­sures the qual­ity of new vehi­cles, redesign­ing its annual Ini­tial Qual­ity Study (IQS) to bet­ter reflect how tech­nol­ogy impacts cus­tomer satisfaction.

In the sec­ond year of the lat­est ver­sion of the IQS, there is a decided decline in new-vehicle qual­ity, one rooted pri­mar­ily in owner dis­sat­is­fac­tion with technology.

READ MORE about the IQS results.

Dam­aged cars from heavy hail storms have recently made it to auc­tions in Col­orado. Black Book ana­lysts were able to act accord­ingly to many of the sold units with their dings from severe weather that don’t end up in com­puter sum­mary sheets of sales. Avail­abil­ity of used cars in the mar­ket con­tin­ues to increase, giv­ing buy­ers more options – though over­abun­dance of sup­ply isn’t there yet in the four-to-five year old range.

Click here to watch the lat­est video report by Ricky Beggs — Senior VP, Edi­to­r­ial Direc­tor, Black Book

Gaso­line Price Volatil­ity is Again a Topic at the Water Cooler:
Real con­cern has to do with fac­tors in Mid­dle East and expected gas price increases.

New Vehi­cle Sales Bring­ing More Trade-ins and Whole­sale Sup­ply:
Add in tra­di­tional sea­sonal sum­mer soft­en­ing goes with reports that prices are lev­el­ing off and adjust­ing down slightly.

Truck Mar­ket Con­tin­ues to Trend with Lower Depre­ci­a­tion Lev­els than Cars:
While trucks have been depre­ci­at­ing, the change level is still lower than last year.