By Ed Pierce, Contributing Editor

Editor’s Note: In July, Element Fleet Management Corp. reported solid second-quarter and first-half results, including second quarter and first half net revenues. growth in service revenue and strong cash flow. Fleet Management Weekly caught up with David Madrigal, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer for the U.S. and Canada, to learn more about the company’s progress.

Element’s David Madrigal is excited about the fleet market in this era of the ‘new normal.’ The Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer believes his company’s investments in recent years directed at strengthening technology, financials, and processes, have permitted the company to deliver a superior client experience at time when fleet managers need a strong partner.

“Fleet managers today face two-levels of concern. Core, everyday fleet problems like how do they increase productivity? How do they mitigate risks? How do they reduce carbon footprint? And now, they need to layer on top of those challenges the new reality of EV conversion, supply chain disruption, more predictive data, remote worker-caused fleet rightsizing, and more,” says David.

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By Pierre Sarnow, Lead Data Scientist, Omnitracs

Collisions — dangerous for drivers and powerful catalysts for skyrocketing nuclear verdicts.

Prioritizing driver safety is paramount. In today’s digital and connected age, a severe collision could spell disaster for your business reputation. Although collisions may appear random, they often aren’t. Various factors, including congested traffic in urban areas and dangerous driving habits, are driving indicators that lead to many collisions.

To analyze collision insights for our customers, I explored our comprehensive culmination of SmartDrive data, which is comprised primarily of Class 8 and other vehicles. Here’s what I uncovered!

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By Ken Robinson, Market Research Manager at Motus

Before the pandemic, local dealerships had hundreds of new vehicles lining their lots on any given day.

Cars were available in every size, color and model, ensuring consumers were able to find the vehicle of their dreams. Now, however, a global chip shortage has led to reduced vehicle production and left auto dealers across the country with barren lots. While dealerships wait to replenish their inventory, tens of thousands of new unfinished vehicles sit idle in parking lots waiting to be completed.

The rise in work from home and remote learning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic drove up the demand for personal electronics that rely on microchips, such as cell phones and laptops. This immediate and dramatic increase far outpaced chip production, and manufacturers were unable to scale operations to meet the market’s need.

How is this impacting fleets?

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Detroit News

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer opened the Motor Bella auto event Tuesday by announcing the state’s plan to develop wireless charging infrastructure on a public road.

The Inductive Vehicle Charging Pilot, a partnership between the Michigan Department of Transportation and the state’s Office of Future Mobility and Electrification, calls for an electrified roadway system for vehicles to charge while driving.

“Michigan was home to the first mile of paved road, and now we’re paving the way for the roads of tomorrow with innovative infrastructure that will support the economy and the environment, helping us achieve our goal of carbon neutrality by 2050,” Whitmer said in a statement.

Read the article at Detroit News

The Detroit Bureau

Battery-electric vehicles owners can expect to pay more to service their vehicles, including maintenance and repairs, at least during the first year of ownership, according to new research — but the cost quickly tumbles and, by year three, BEVs have a significant cost advantage over conventional gas-powered vehicles.

BEVs cost about 2.3 times more than gas-powered vehicles during the first three months of ownership. Most of that is in the form of repairs and recalls. But costs quickly start to decline for battery-powered cars, while rising for vehicles using internal combustion engines, or ICE.

For the first full year, service runs about 1.6 times higher. Breaking that down by category, maintenance costs an average $7 per vehicle for BEVs compared to $30 for the average gas model. But repairs ran $247, nearly double the $142 the owner of a typical gas model spent. BEVs also ran up $50 in recall costs compared to just $12.

Read the article at The Detroit Bureau.

The Drive

Walmart will begin offering autonomous deliveries in three U.S. cities thanks to a new partnership with Ford and self-driving tech company Argo AI.

The pilot program will kick off later this year in Austin, Miami, and Washington D.C., starting first in “defined service areas” and expanding over time. Customers will be able to place an order using Walmart’s online ordering system and if the product is being sent to a home in one of the cities’ service areas, an Argo-programmed Ford may be sent out for delivery.

Ford says that this collaboration will help drive industry knowledge of how autonomous vehicles can optimize delivery logistics. Walmart can evaluate how these technologies can improve consumer experiences, specifically by meeting the expectation of next-day and even same-day delivery—a step that could one day bring the retailer to Amazon’s level.

Read the article at

autoblog

As electric vehicles (EVs) become the new standard, charging infrastructure will become a commonplace detail blending into the landscape, available in a host of places from a range of providers: privately run charging stations, the office parking lot, home garages and government-provided locations to fill in the gaps.

We need a new energy blueprint for the United States in order to maintain a stable grid to support this national move to EV charging.

The Biden administration announced 500,000 charging stations to be installed nationally and additional energy storage to facilitate the shift to EVs. Integrating all of this new infrastructure and transitioning requires balancing the traffic on the grid and managing increased energy demand that stretches beyond power lines and storage itself.

Read the article at autoblog

The Detroit Bureau

In the future, drivers of Stellantis vehicles could employ technology that reacts far more quickly than current driver-assist systems thanks to the use of Multi-access Edge Computing, or MEC.

For Stellantis, MEC could collect data from red light or speed cameras to notify the driver about what they can’t see, such as upcoming driving hazards, pedestrians or approaching emergency vehicles. Such notifications are a result of Stellantis engineers working with HAAS Alert’s Safety Cloud, a digital warning system that triggers when an emergency vehicle activates their lights. The alert would come through the vehicle’s Uconnect system.

“Improved hardware and expanded software expertise have opened new opportunities for Stellantis with safety systems being one of the many areas we focus on,” said Mamatha Chamarthi, head of Software Business and Product Management, in a statement.

Read the article at The Detroit Bureau.

MSN

Several automakers offer features where a camera inside a vehicle monitors the driver and sets off alerts when it detects them starting to fall asleep. Researchers have developed an even smarter in-car camera system that can figure out exactly what a driver is doing, potentially improving the safety of semi-autonomous driving features.

The new system uses AI-powered image recognition to construct a digital skeleton of the driver that provides enough details for the system to interpret what exactly the driver is doing, while additional object recognition keeps tabs on the location of items like smartphones or coffee cups.

When the two systems are paired, a vehicle is able to determine if a driver is paying attention to the road, or distracted with other activities like texting, eating, or even interacting with other passengers in the vehicle. By keeping tabs on what the driver is doing, a semi-autonomous driving system can determine how distracted they are, and potentially how long it will take them to return their focus to driving, and take that into account before handing control of the vehicle back to them.

Read the article at MSN.

FMW Editorial Staff

In order to reduce driver risk and help drivers change behavior, look at the information that’s coming in.

And, these days, the more data, the better! Motor vehicle violations and license-checking information. Past crash and collision incident information. And, especially, telematics. Combined and normalized, the aggregate data provides terrific insight into risk.

Only after data is collected and the picture fully formed, can a potent action plan be developed. that targets drivers, departments, or the organization.

A focused approach is more efficient because a company can reduce broad-based training to drivers that they may or may not need. Finally, the personalized approach is more successful in rectifying a specific driver performance or behavioral problem.

At the driver level, an action plan can address training. At the departmental or enterprise levels, issues such as culture, scheduling, or job performance metrics can be addressed.

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