By Ed Pierce, Contributing Editor

Samuel Kellner-Steinmetz, the Chief Sales Officer of Fleet Logistics Group, recently sat down with Fleet Management Weekly to provide insight into the current European fleet market as new challenges and opportunities demand the remaking of European and global fleets.

Headquartered near Munich, Germany, Fleet Logistics is Europe’s largest independent fleet management supplier, serving as the link between the leasing company and the company operating the fleet.

He says, “The world has undergone two significant dislocations in the recent years. First, there’s the COP21 Paris Climate Agreement. The second dislocation is COVID-19.

How do these two events affect the acceleration of electric vehicles, among other trends in Europe and worldwide?”

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By Ed Smith, President, Agile Fleet

What would you say if I told you that you could reduce fleet costs tomorrow?

You can. Did you know that having, communicating, and consistently enforcing policy can dramatically reduce fleet costs? I like to say that having good fleet policies is like having a money tree. If a cost-saving policy is communicated and enforced consistently, it will save you money every time.

Do you have a money tree?

Despite the obvious benefits and the relatively low cost of developing them, many fleets do not have written policies. If they do, they do not have systems in place to efficiently communicate and enforce them. Why? Seriously, why?

One great example of such a policy is limiting the use of personal vehicles for official use. There are many reasons it is not a good idea to have employees using personal vehicles for business purposes in most cases. Cost is chief among those reasons.

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By Ron Zima ADpPR and George Survant

Fleet managers face many challenges in improving their fleet’s fuel efficiency. Perhaps the most daunting of those challenges is idle reduction.

Based on numbers provided by Argonne National Laboratory, Americans and Canadians annually spend 6.6 Billion Gallons of gasoline and diesel idling for zero mileage and minimal if any benefit.

Further research reveals that Individual fleets across all sectors are spending an average of 40% of engine hours at idle when not in motion, generally not in traffic or performing a business function, such as running power take off (PTO) to run a bucket on a utility truck.

Unrequired idling is an enormous waste of money and contributes to an estimated 33 million tons of CO2 and other pollutants annually in a time when it is widely recognized that we must reduce emissions as quickly as possible. Electrification of our fleets can help, but it will take decades to completely convert all fleets.

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Car and Driver

CEO Mary Barra said General Motors will introduce two new zero-emission vehicles for its commercial customers.

These will be a full-size battery-electric cargo van that will carry the Chevrolet name and a medium-duty truck that will be powered by both the company’s Ultium electric batteries and its Hydrotec hydrogen fuel-cell technology.

These new EVs could replace or complement the current Express van and Silverado 4500HD

Earlier this year, GM launched a new business called BrightDrop and said it will offer electric delivery products for release later this year. The new electric vans will be designed for standard and “last mile” delivery solutions for commercial customers. Two vehicles have been announced so far.

Read the article at Car and Driver.

MotorTrend

The automaker that implemented mass production and affordable cars over 100 years ago is now making modern driver-assist features more accessible. Ford offers the Co-Pilot360 active safety suite in some form on almost every model it sells.

Unlike the more basic systems, BlueCruise works with a seriously impressive collection of hardware. The sensors included high-resolution GPS, three radar units, and a camera mounted high on the windshield. There’s also an infrared camera mounted behind the steering wheel facing the driver to monitor the driver’s attention level.

The system adds lane-following capability (new to Ford), and once the vehicle is centered in its lane and is located in a Hands-Free Blue Zone, a “Hands Free” icon appears alongside an image of the vehicle with concentric circles emanating out to indicate the system is monitoring its surroundings.

Read the article at MotorTrend.

The Drive

Automakers are being pressured by federal and state governments to ramp up electric car production, and U.S. President Joe Biden is signing an executive order that targets half of all new car sales to be electric by 2030.

As fewer cars visit the pump, the amount of tax revenue decreases and needs to be made up elsewhere, something that’s addressed in the upcoming infrastructure bill with a pilot program for a national per-mile tax that would tax drivers based on their annual mileage rather than at the pump.

A per-mile fuel tax is a controversial topic that many drivers have mixed feelings on, and they’ll likely continue to have shifting opinions as electric vehicles become more prominent on the roads they share.

Read the article at The Drive.

Autoblog

The city of Detroit, in partnership with both Ford and Bosch, is about to open a new Smart Parking Lab, hosted in Detroit’s Bedrock Assembly Garage.

It’s a real-world environment to test future autonomous technologies that could be used to refine autonomous valet parking into a product.

Opening in September, the facility will also enable these companies to test if it’s possible to introduce automatic smart charging into the system. Rental company Enterprise is going to test how this technology could streamline its own processes. It hopes that cars that drive themselves to a valet station, then recharge themselves before parking back on the lot ready for pickup will reduce dead time between rentals.

Read the article at Autoblog.

The Car Gossip

President Joe Biden’s executive order signed last week establishes a nonbinding target for zero- emission vehicles – battery-electrics, plug-in hybrids and fuel cells – to make up half of all new passenger vehicles sold in 2030. It also directs the EPA and NHTSA to work on longer-term fuel economy and emissions standards for vehicles produced after the 2026 model year.

Major automakers including the Detroit 3, Toyota Motor North America and Volkswagen Group of America last week announced their support of Biden’s goal of reaching a 50 percent ZEV sales share in 2030, with executives from Ford Motor Co., General Motors, Stellantis and the UAW joining the president as he signed the executive order outside the White House.

The industry’s commitment, however, hinges on efforts from the administration and policymakers to put forth measures that foster greater consumer adoption EVs, including purchase incentives, charging infrastructure, R&D investments and incentives to boost domestic EV manufacturing and supply chains. “The biggest thing that’s happening here is there’s a realization, on the part of both labor and business now, that this is the future. We can’t sit by,” Biden said.

Read the article at The Car Gossip.

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

In a recent article, we examined what it takes to be a safe driver.

In that post we explored the skill of driving as described in the SPIDER model (Visual Scanning, Hazard Prediction, Identification, Decision Making and Execution of a Response ) by Donald Fisher and David Strayer.

In this article we will examine the other side of the safe driving equation; risk, and will explore why behaviors such as Speeding, Distraction and Fatigue pose such a threat (the “Triple Threat”).

In my work with safety professionals, I have occasionally heard variations on the following question: “Why should we ban phones when drivers engage in all sorts of risky behaviors while driving?”

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By Ed Pierce, President of ITA Communications. Fleet.

I have been privileged to write this Fleet Management Weekly column for several years now, and I always invite readers to drop me a line with any marketing questions or suggestions.

I have gladly responded to individuals with the best answers to their questions, and I have learned from other expert marketers’ ideas.

In this column, I’d like to focus on several inquiries concerning news vs. promotion.

As marketers, it is easy for others in a business to assume that marketing is analogous to selling. We know that it’s more complex, but sometimes face stiff resistance to the complexity and subtleties of an effective marketing program.

Here is a great example of a challenge for marketers:

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