By Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketer

While brand marketers for consumer companies exploit the new web-created opportunities to capture buyers’ attention, B2B marketers have had good reason to wait.

The general consensus is that digital marketing comprises corporate website and repetitive corporate messaging placed in banner advertising and in social media posts, tweets, and photos.

As a marketing manager for a provider of B2B products or services, you know that the first question your executives will ask is “Where’s the value?” Are you really going to explain marketing value based on LinkedIn “Connections,” Facebook “likes,” or Twitter “followers,”? Not likely! It’s hard enough explaining the value of traditional advertising measures like cost-per-thousand, impressions, awareness and perceptions.

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By Andrew Boada, Editor at Large

Thinking of converting your entire fleet to zero-emission, all-electric Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs)?

If so, according to the Canadian telematics company Geotab, the process has three distinct phases, each of which is marked by a distinct set of management considerations and optimized by using data fleets can best obtain from a fleet-wide telematics system.

That was the message fleet professionals heard from Steffano Peduzzi, Geotab’s European director of engineering at the Great British Fleet Event in London earlier this year, where fleet electrification was a major topic of discussion.

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By Paul Atchley, PhD, eDriving’s Brain Scientist Advisor

Imagine one day that you, the fleet safety manager, receive a report about your drivers that reveals that about 1 in 10 of your drivers is addicted to a substance that, when used, significantly impairs their ability to drive safely.

And further imagine the report also tells you that almost all of the remaining drivers are probably not “addicted” in the clinical sense, but they are highly compelled to take the same substance while driving and admit they keep the substance in their vehicles and also admit to occasional use.

This is that report. For a little more than a decade since the release of the iPhone, Silicon Valley has been finding ways to increase the degree to which the “phones” and apps are able to grab and hold the attention of their owners. Some very bright people do careful work to enhance the psychological compulsion to use our smart devices constantly.

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The New York Times

When fully autonomous vehicles begin cruising on public roads, they will have to be able to detect when people enter or exit a vehicle, who the person is, whether they have left anything behind in the car, and especially if a person has become disabled (because of intoxication or a medical emergency).

New safety concerns have prompted technology for cameras that recognize facial expressions, sensors that detect heart rates and software that assesses a driver’s state of awareness are increasingly viewed as part of an inevitable driving future. Eventually technology could be able to judge the emotional state of people in the car.

Read the article at The New York Times.

The Verge

Two security researchers and self-described “white hat hackers” found a trove of unencrypted location, camera, and other data on a wrecked Tesla Model 3

When they accessed the car’s computer, they found unencrypted data from “at least 17 different devices.

Newer vehicles are able to store a ton of both personal and vehicle data. Tesla’s cars tend to collect and store more vehicle data because they’re outfitted with more sensors. But as cars are outfitted with ever more sensors and computers, those that have been sold or crashed now contain far more granular data about an owner than what’s generated over a few days in a rental.

Read the article at The Verge.

Bloomberg

Lithium-ion batteries inside electric vehicles, once ignited, can’t be put out with chemicals from a conventional extinguisher. The battery fires are susceptible to a self-destructive chain reaction known as thermal runaway, causing a feedback loop of rising temperatures.

Safety experts say the only way to extinguish a lithium-ion battery inside a car is with thousands of gallons of water, much more than what it takes to stop a fire in a typical gasoline engine. The other option is to just let it burn itself out.

Read the article at Bloomberg.

Reuters

Volkswagen has signed a contract with Ford to develop a successor to its VW Amarok pickup truck.

Ford has a platform for its Ranger midsized pickup truck, which could help VW lower development costs.

VW and Ford continue discussions about extending its alliance to include autonomous driving and mobility services. Ford bought Argo AI, a Pittsburgh-based self-driving startup, in 2017, but with spiraling development costs for autonomous cars in recent years, the company and other carmakers have sought alliances and outside investors.

Read the article at Reuters.

The New York Times

The European Union plans to require speed-limiting and emergency braking technology in all new car models starting in 2022, along with dozens of other technical features to improve road safety.

The speed-limiting technology, called intelligent speed assistance, uses video cameras, satellite location data or both to detect when drivers go over the speed limit, and curbs their ability to speed up further by restricting engine power. Drivers can override the system, depending on the model, by pressing harder on the gas pedal, for example.

Read the article at New York Post.

By Mark Boada, Executive Editor

In light of the two recent Boeing 737 Max disasters, I’m finding it both ironic and a bit troubling that passenger airlines’ success with automating flights is so often held up as a paradigm for the advent of self-driving vehicles.

OK, so it’s been proven over and over again that we’re all safer flying in a commercial jetliner than driving our cars. I get it. But the Boeing case shows that when big companies rush to outdo the competition, errors in the long chain of events leading to production and rollout can be overlooked not just by manufacturers’ engineers, but by regulators entrusted with our safety.

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The transportation industry is evolving, and it’s imperative that fleet companies adapt to remain successful

By Mark Boada, Executive Editor

The e-commerce boom is changing the face of the commercial trucking industry, ever-increasing volumes of consumers’ purchases being delivered to their doorstep. In this interview, Anthony Sasso, head of TD Bank Equipment Finance discusses these trends and offers insights into how trucking companies can respond cost-effectively as they finance the reshaping of their fleets.

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