Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketer

As mentioned last month, business buyers are altering their spend during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even before the current crisis, B2B buyers expressed concern about the possibility of a recession this year. Additionally, if a recession occurred, they wanted vendors to be better resources for them. They expected more quality and accurate information about what they are buying and confidence in the decision to buy.

In the throes of the downturn, vendors must recognize that prospects and customers are busy mitigating losses, minimizing layoffs and carefully maintaining their financial footing. It is exactly the wrong time for aggressive marketing and sales. Promotion alone will turn off buyers who face tough decisions about where they need to cut. B2B vendors need to show concern, offer assistance, and offer solutions to the customer’s problems. Sales and revenues take a back seat to problem-solving and relationships.

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By Mark Boada, Executive Editor

As deputy director of DeKalb County Georgia’s 3,500-vehicle fleet, Robert Gordon is responsible for all of the county’s emergency vehicles, including police cars, fire trucks and ambulances.

But you could excuse him if he never imagined he would someday be behind the wheel of a county bus, responding directly to an emergency himself.

But that’s what happened last month, when he got a call that 43 homeless people being sheltered by the county in a hotel in Doraville, a suburb of Atlanta, needed to be transferred to another facility.

“The hotel manager had called Doraville’s mayor and asked that they be evacuated because of the risk they might be infected and pass on the COVID-19 virus to the large number of more-vulnerable senior citizens who were staying there,” Gordon says.

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By Ed Dubens, CEO/ Founder of eDriving

As countries around the world start discussing lockdown exit plans and businesses adjust to new ways of operating, are you prepared for living and working in a COVID-19 world?

It may feel like longer, but only a few weeks ago organizations around the world started taking drastic measures in response to the global coronavirus pandemic. Now, although day-to-day life for the majority of companies remains significantly affected, for many there is a feeling that we will soon be gradually edging back towards “normality”, but what will the new “normal” look like?

According to The Brookings Institution, up to half of American workers are currently working from home, more than double the number who worked from home (at least occasionally) in 2017-18. And, while some jobs can’t be carried out from home, it is expected that the coronavirus outbreak is “accelerating the trend toward telecommuting, possibly for the long term.”

For organizations with employees who usually drive as part of their jobs, this could result in a lasting reduction in employees regularly driving for work. Of course, while specific “driver” roles cannot be performed from home, and companies with delivery drivers are experiencing unprecedented demand, many organizations could see a proportion of employees reducing travel.

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Forbes

With modern over-the-air updates one can turn a fleet of cars into an army of adversarial robots.

The concepts of secure platforms, run-time systems, and protecting critical assets are well known within the industry. Blackberry is a leading supplier of secure operating systems for automobiles. The application of these secure methods for cybersecurity are left to automakers as voluntary self certification.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) has been developing a vehicle regulation with regards to cybersecurity in connected and autonomous vehicles. UNECE vehicle regulations are law in 54 nations, and most other nations accept UNECE approved vehicles for import, registration, sale and use.

Read the article at Forbes.

The Seattle Times

The cargo ship Jupiter Spirit arrived in Los Angeles’ harbor on April 24 after an almost three-week journey from Japan, ready to unload its cargo of about 2,000 Nissan Armada SUVs, Rogue crossovers and Infiniti sedans in a quick, half-day operation.

When the ship got about a mile offshore, its captain was ordered to drop anchor. And there the ship remained for almost a week – a floating symbol of an unprecedented logjam as nearby storage lots covering hundreds of acres overflowed with vehicles that Americans suddenly have little desire to purchase.

Last month’s sales collapse produced a chain-reaction backlog, causing some ships to divert to other ports, others to wait days to discharge cargo and, ultimately, some to cancel voyages before they even got underway. Ports are having to find space in the surrounding areas for surplus cars.

Read the article at The Seattle Times.

Fast Company

When people hear the term autonomous car, they are often under the mistaken belief that the role of the human driver has been eliminated, that he or she is now relegated to the role of passenger.

AI is sophisticated enough to take over the basic function of driving a vehicle, but driving entails so much more than just navigating a car. We still have the edge over AI because we think like other human beings. We anticipate that other drivers or pedestrians may not always follow the rules of the road, or they may behave in irrational ways.

“The biggest myth about automation is the more automation, the less you need human expertise. Actually, the more you automate, the more you need to educate, where, when, how etc.,” observes Bryan Reimer, PhD, a research scientist at MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics, a researcher in the AgeLab, and associate director of the New England University Transportation Center.

Read the article at Fast Company.

During these unprecedented times, ISM has developed a Pandemic Toolkit to allow supply management professionals greater visibility and transparency into their existing supply chains.

The toolkit features Templates to help you quickly assess risk, a Resource Guide that keeps you up-to-date and informed with international and national business guidelines, Recommended Strategies to coordinate with your plan of action, and more!

Join their free webinar at 1pm ET on May 7 presenting the benefits of the toolkit.

Car and Driver

Just how different the post-coronavirus world will look is open to speculation—but survey data from gives a glimpse into how people will utilize transportation, both public and private, once the world reopens.

Of those who regularly used public transit such as buses, subways, or trains before the pandemic, 20 percent said that they no longer will do so, and another 28 percent said they will use it less frequently.

Even if more people are driving to socially isolate themselves, increased interest in continuing to work from home could lessen the number of people commuting each day; 75 percent of people in the survey said that now they are working from home, they’d like to continue to do so at least occasionally. Over half said they want remotely working to be how they work from now on.

Read the article at Car and Driver.

Fleet World

Advances in voice-activated systems for in-car controls could significantly improve safety for drivers and other road users, according to research by the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL).

A key issues for fleets, driver distraction is estimated to be a factor in up to 30% of vehicle collisions across Europe and evidence shows that driver distraction levels are much higher when using touchscreen technologies compared to voice-activated systems.

Dr Neale Kinnear, head of behavioural science at TRL, said: “The results of this study clearly show that touch control infotainment systems are highly distracting to drivers, far more so than voice-activated systems. However, even current voice control systems increase drivers’ reaction times and remains a concern for road safety.

Read the article at Fleet World.

Forbes

True self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.

We’ll have AI-driving systems that aren’t the brightest, yet nonetheless can drive a car, doing so to the degree that they are either as safe as human drivers or possibly more so. Continuing to obediently take requests from humans for rides, the AI would dutifully drive the self-driving cars.

Remembering HAL from 2001: A Space Odessey, will we end-up with AI-based true self-driving cars that have AI systems pretending to be less-than-full AI so as to hide their capabilities and remain on the low-down? Should there always be a human-in-the-loop proviso, thus presumably safeguarding that if the AI system goes awry, there is a chance that humans can catch it or stop it?

Read the article at Forbes.