By Ed Smith, President, Agile Fleet

Did you know that 80% of fleet managers expect budget reductions next year?

Fleets hit hard financially by the COVID-19 crisis may now be required to make changes that will reduce costs, increase social distancing and sanitation, and improve efficiency. The good news is that it may not be as difficult as you may think. Things like right-sizing, eliminating underused vehicles from the fleet, and sharing vehicles in a self-service motor pool (that can be operated remotely!) can all significantly reduce costs.

Did you know that the carrying cost of one passenger vehicle is between $3,500-$8,000 annually? If you can eliminate just 5 underused vehicles out of your fleet for example, you can save between $17,000 and $40,000 a year.

One of the best ways to reduce costs and (improve social distancing) is by implementing a shared vehicle fleet with a self-service motor pool system. Sharing vehicles, rather than allowing people to use assigned vehicles, not only reduces costs but offers many benefits to your employees.

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Since the global COVID-19 pandemic emerged, fleet-based businesses have faced a number of logistical, operational and monetary challenges. If your business is presently slow, that won’t always be the case.

Before things get busy again, owners and managers may want to consider making the most of this downtime to help build a strong foundation for the future.  Now is the ideal time for fleet owners to constructively take stock of existing processes and establish new procedures to help strengthen their business to emerge stronger in the post-COVID-19 world:

• Get laser-focused on cost control through engine diagnostics, service records tracking, monitoring fuel usage and wear and tear.
• Make the most of analytics and reporting these days to monitor critical business aspects. Capitalize on the available time to do trend analysis, API integration or review critical reports.
• Improve customer experience by closely monitoring customer feedback with the help of technology. Use this time to reach out and act upon specific concerns.

In this free ebrief, you will find out ways to help transform today’s current downtime into your future uptime. Click to Download.

By Mark Boada, Executive Editor

If the city of Orlando, Florida, meets its goal of relying on nothing but renewable energy by 2050, David Dunn will have had a lot to do with it.

Since 2006, Dunn has worked for the city, first in its facilities management department and since 2011 with the added responsibility for fleet operations as manager of Orlando’s fleet and facilities management division. As such, he’s been in a unique position to leverage the assets of the division to make dramatic reductions in the city’s carbon footprint and saving the city millions of dollars in what it spends on electricity and fuel.

Its mandate is for every one of the city’s fleet of some 2,600 on road cars, trucks and buses, and 1,400 other vehicles to be powered by alternative fuels by 2030. It may seem like a tall order, but the fleet is nearly there, and Dunn speaks with the assurance of someone who’s been the executive in charge of a fleet that’s won a place in the 100 Best Fleets in North America every year since 2012.

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IIHS

More than a quarter of teen drivers killed in crashes during 2013-17 were driving micro, mini or small cars, and nearly two-thirds were driving 6-15-year-old vehicles, indicating almost no change compared with 2008-12.

Previous research has shown that teens drive less than older drivers, but they crash about 4 times as often, relative to the number of miles they drive. Teens were also less likely to be driving vehicles equipped with standard side airbags and electronic stability control (ESC) and more likely to be driving models on which those features aren’t even options.

“It’s understandable that parents don’t want to shell out big bucks for their teen’s first car, and they probably don’t realize how much safer a newer, larger vehicle is,” says IIHS Research Scientist Rebecca Weast, lead author of the paper. “Small vehicles don’t protect as well in a crash, and older vehicles are less likely to be equipped with essential safety equipment.”

Read the article at IIHS.

CNN Business

Uber and Lyft have said they may suspend their operations in California as soon as this week while simultaneously pushing for a referendum in November to exempt them from the law, known as AB-5.

The threats from the companies to halt their businesses came after a California court ordered them to reclassify their drivers as employees instead of independent contractors in 10 days.

Both companies are grappling with sharp revenue declines from the pandemic and have histories of steep losses. Now they risk losing access to a state whose economy is larger than most countries – or else overhauling their business models.

Read the article at CNN Business.

Detroit Free Press

According to a July survey of Tweets, interest in electric pickups is growing, and the early leaders — very early, since none of the vehicles in question exists yet — are Rivian’s R1T and the Tesla Cybertruck.

The F-150, of course, has been the bestselling vehicle in the U.S. for decades. An electric version should be available in 2022. The Chevy Silverado, America’s  No. 2 seller with an EV model promised by 2025, also failed to make the list.

“We’ll see a flurry of EV pickup trucks rolled out over the next few years,” Cox Automotive senior analyst Michelle Krebs said. “We have no indication of who will buy them. Will traditional pickup buyers suddenly convert to EVs? Or will these EV pickups attract buyers who normally wouldn’t consider a truck? We don’t know yet.”

Read the article at Detroit Free Press.

Autoblog

Autoblog’s editorial staff judged the combination of blind spot monitoring and active blind spot crash avoidance on the 2020 Kia Telluride as the best in the industry.

Kia’s system starts with a traditional blind spot warning light in the side mirror. When equipped with the available head-up display, there’s a second warning light beamed onto the windshield in your line of sight adjacent to other information. This lets you know if there’s a car in your blind spot without even turning around to look.

If all this fails, the blind spot collision avoidance system will attempt to prevent a crash for you. When an approaching vehicle is detected next to or too close behind your vehicle, the system can apply the brakes to the opposite side of the car, dragging it back over into your lane before a collision occurs. It notifies the driver in the dash when this activates.

Read the article at Autoblog.

Forbes

The resistance to EVs you see online, isn’t usually about the price – it seems to be driven by a fundamental dislike for change, and the lack of EV options for different vehicular needs.

EVs aren’t all about taking all your fossil fuel cars and making them electric. There’s also a significant shift in the way we transport ourselves which has been further accentuated by the Covid pandemic. There are also issues with automotive industry workers and their powerful unions being worried about losing their jobs.

A further reluctance comes from the dealerships. because car sales margins are traditionally low, and they make their money selling aftermarket service packages – which are almost not needed with EVs, particularly when they are fully connected, allowing remote management and diagnostics.

Read the article at Forbes.

By Laura Jozwiak, Senior Vice President of Sales & Client Relations, Wheels, Inc.

Well, here we are.

It’s five months into the COVID-19 pandemic. And for many of us, we’re working from home and learning new technologies—and using fun backgrounds—to improve our virtual meetings skills. We’re all balancing supporting our customers while adjusting to new routines, such as preparing to balance more remote learning for our kids.

During any period of crisis and stress, our programmed response is flight or fight. I also think of it as “freeze in place” or “move forward.” For this conversation, I would like to talk about moving forward, while keeping the customer driven mindset you’ve cultivated at the forefront.

Let’s go back in time to set the stage a bit.

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strategy+business

The COVID-19 crisis has prompted countless companies to shut their office doors and rethink whether staff need to be in those offices as much as before the pandemic, or even at all.

If remote working is going to work, leaders have to communicate more and be extra vigilant about removing as much ambiguity as they can from their exchanges with staff, particularly in email, in which the recipients don’t have the benefit of hearing the sender’s tone.

Read the article at strategy+business.