By FMW Editorial Staff

As companies look to rebound from the recent economic downturn, those with fleet operations are reassessing budgets, resizing fleets, uncovering hidden costs, and finding innovative ways to achieve operational efficiencies.

Fleet vehicle transport and relocation services provide a unique opportunity to reduce costs and increase productivity. Success depends on a carefully- planned schedule of ancillary services as part of a move.

These services might include one or more of the following: vehicle legalization, maintenance, de-identification, body repair, storage, and others. With a single-source, end-to-end solution, companies reduce vehicle downtime and keep drivers more productive.

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By Ed Pierce, Contributing Editor

The recent announcement of a newly-formed partnership between Wheels and GM’s OnStar Business Solutions promises to deliver a wide array of vehicle information with significant safety and operational benefits to the partners’ fleet customers. OnStar-embedded hardware is available across most of the automaker’s vehicle lineup.

Wheels senior product manager Sara Sweeney provided Fleet Management Weekly with an in-depth look at the benefits of the partnership for fleets: “Access to the OnStar data can help our customers tackle today’s important business concerns. First, they can improve driver behavior and safety. Next, they can enhance fleet operational efficiency and customer service. Finally, they can gain insight into fleet electrification strategies,” says Sweeney.

OnStar-connected data coming directly from the vehicle includes vehicle location, trip information, maintenance status, risk, or driver behavior indicators. Driving events, seatbelt usage, and speed are examples of the safety behavioral data points. There is also data collected on vehicle idling and hours driven. This data provides greater insight into how the vehicle is being used and how well it meets the driver and the company’s needs.

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By Adam Danielson, Director of Sales

Safety is one of the fleet industry’s most critical issues as it seeks to reduce crashes and improve safety standards. The benefits of creating a robust fleet safety culture go far beyond reducing crashes, it can also improve the entire organization while mitigating risk.

Where do you begin?
Continuous MVR monitoring, combined with a fleet safety program and other behavioral monitoring tools, is the ideal solution for effectively monitoring drivers’ risk profiles, ensuring compliance and safety, reducing liability, and minimizing business losses for any industry that employs drivers.

What to do with all that data?
When you add MVR monitoring, safety policies, training, vehicle anti-collision technologies, CSA scores, connected vehicles and telematics together, you create the beginnings of a very robust safety culture and A LOT of data. Too much data for the average fleet manager to manage and use effectively.How do you make the data actionable for your fleet?

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The Detroit Bureau

The South Korean automaker isn’t providing many details, but Kia acknowledged it was hit by a cyberattack that disrupted the company’s operations.

Problems with its IT infrastructure surfaced as owners found they were unable to make payments or unlock their vehicles remotely. Car owners weren’t the only one stuck as dealers discovered they couldn’t complete any transactions using the company’s proprietary portal.

Several websites reported that hackers belonging to a specific “gang” had demanded $20 million to release its grip on Kia’s operations. “We are aware of online speculation that Kia is subject to a ransomware attack. At this time, and based on the best and most current information, we can confirm that we have no evidence that Kia or any Kia data is subject to a ransomware attack,” the company said.

Read the article at The Detroit Bureau.

CNET

JD Power polled owners of three-year-old cars to see just how many problems they’ve experienced and created the annual Vehicle Dependability Study. The results for 2021 tell a tale of a changing automotive industry, where brands that might have once been derided as cheap or unreliable, made it into the top five.

Lexus and Porsche have consistently offered exceedingly well-built vehicles that function despite increasing levels of technical complexity. Lexus has been in the top spot for 9 of the last 10 years. Porsche is ranked second, with the Porsche 911 ranked as the most dependable car of all, overall.

Kia is the third-ranked brand making it the best-scoring mass-market brand (non-luxury) by a long shot. It’s followed by Toyota and Buick, rounding out the top five.

Read the article at CNET.

The Drive

When purchasing a vehicle, your bill of sale may include a number of charges on top of the MSRP. The big one is the destination freight fee; the price varies wildly from manufacturer to manufacturer and model to model.

The destination freight fee for a small EV is $895 for 2020 models and an additional $100 for 2021 models. For a truck, the price increased from $1595 to $1695 for the newest model.

A study by Consumer Reports discovered that automakers raised destination fees by thirty percent between 2011 and 2020, which is two and a half times the average inflation rate. CR is advocating for new rules requiring automakers to include destination charges in advertised prices in print and online.

Read the article at The Drive.

Car and Driver

Plenty of automakers have jumped on the EV bandwagon with their own EVs or a plug-ins, and self-recharging hybrids. So far, no major legacy automaker has put all its eggs in the EV basket. Whether because of looming regulatory targets or the increased public interest in electric cars, that seems to be changing.

This year, GM released the all-new 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV and revised Bolt EV. GMC Hummer EV production starts this fall. BMW will show the first all-electric M badge car and Stellantis plans to launch 10 hybrid or electric models across its brands (including a plug-in Wrangler) by the end of 2021.

Jaguar Land Rover says it will begin testing a hydrogen fuel-cell prototype sometime in 2021 or early 2022. Mercedes plans to introduce 10 new EVs through its EQ brand by the end of the year, including the 2022 EQS. Ford intends to start production of an EV F-150 by the middle of 2022.

Read the article at Car and Driver.

McKinsey & Company

Perhaps the most obvious impact of COVID-19 on the labor force is the dramatic increase in employees working remotely. Roughly three-quarters of people using digital channels for the first time during the pandemic say they will continue using them when things return to “normal.”

Other kinds of virtual transactions such as telemedicine, online banking, and streaming entertainment have also taken off. These virtual practices may decline somewhat as economies reopen but are likely to continue well above levels seen before the pandemic. This shift to digital transactions has propelled growth in delivery, transportation, and warehouse jobs.

The largest negative impact of the pandemic is expected to fall on workers in food service and customer sales and service roles, as well as less-skilled office support roles. Jobs in warehousing and transportation may increase as a result of the growth in e-commerce and the delivery economy, but those increases are unlikely to offset the disruption of many low-wage jobs.

Read the article at McKinsey & Company.

By Art Liggio, CEO and President, Driving Dynamics

For anyone who has even spent a modest amount of time on the roadways this past year, it is quite evident that the frequency of drivers engaging in aggressive driving has increased substantially.

Hard facts clearly support this observation. New York City’s speed cameras, for instance, have been issuing about the same number of tickets since the COVID crisis began despite a 51 percent plunge in vehicles on the road. NHTSA recently released its preliminary 2020 crash report covering the first 9 months of the year.

While miles driven in 2020 went down dramatically, the number of traffic fatalities for this period was up 4.6 percent. Another way of looking at this is that the rate of fatalities per miles driven has jumped 18 percent. Sad, disheartening news for sure.

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CNBC

Mazda just topped Consumer Reports’ annual ranking of the most reliable automotive brands for the first time. Mazda’s North America sales grew last year despite the Covid pandemic, thanks to the popularity of its CX-9 seven-seat sport utility vehicle and CX-30 crossover.

To determine the rankings, Consumer Reports buys vehicles anonymously from dealerships for road testing. It conducts tests for braking, handling, comfort, convenience, safety and fuel economy, and includes survey responses from Consumer Reports subscribers in its analysis.

BMW, Subaru, Porsche and Honda rounded out the top five spots on the Consumer Reports 2021 Brand Report Card. Alfa Romeo fell to the bottom of the list of 32 brands, behind Land Rover, Mitsubishi, Jeep and Lincoln.

Read the article at CNBC.