By Bill Bishop, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, FLD Remarketing

At the beginning of 2021 and 2022, I was privileged to write a year end/year ahead article for the folks at Fleet Management Weekly.

It’s also something we do for our own customers, partners and associates by producing and distributing our free White Metal Market Report, a look at the medium duty wholesale market that we publish each and every quarter.

Looking back on the predictions I made – and measuring them against the reality of what actually occurred – I would offer that I wasn’t far off in identifying what would become some of the most important trends that would follow.

And now, as we kick off another year, I’m ready to take a look back at 2022, and offer some thoughts on what I believe the fleet industry will experience in 2023.

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By Steve Saltzgiver

Wow! It’s hard to believe we’re coming up on another year since the inaugural Fleet Success Summit was held in Mesa, AZ!

However, I’m really looking forward to our second event, March 21-22, 2023, at the Luxor Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas!

This year,  the slogan of “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” will be violated as attendees will take back some priceless fleet management gems and best practices to significantly improve their operations.

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AT&T and Geotab have joined forces to help drive emissions reductions in the transportation sector, combining Geotab’s award-winning telematics solutions with AT&T’s Internet of Things (IoT) platforms.

By John Schulz, director of Sustainability Integration, AT&T & Eric Mallia, vice president, Sustainability Business Solutions for Geotab

At the COP27 global climate summit in Egypt this past November, leaders from around the world gathered to discuss how to best accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon economy. Scientists have warned that we have a shrinking window of opportunity to keep global temperature rises from passing 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times.

It is past the threshold where the impacts of climate change – including superstorms, floods, wildfires and drought – are expected to become significantly more extreme.

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Telematics help reduce insurance costs while providing a new revenue stream and enhancing buyer loyalty

Among the innovative new products advancing telematics technology has created are policies with rates that are not only based on the owner’s driving habits, but ones that use a car’s telematics to specify how far owners drive.

During the past few years, at least 17 OEMs have released telematics-based insurance packages and many automakers have partnered with insurance companies, including Ford with Arity, GM with American Family, Ford with Octo Telematics, PSA with AXA, Daimler with SwissRE.

via The Detroit Bureau

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released its latest projections for traffic fatalities in 2022, showing a 0.2% decrease compared to fatalities during the same time in 2021.

NHTSA projects that fatalities declined slightly in the third quarter of 2022 – the second straight quarterly decline in fatalities after seven consecutive quarters of year-to-year increases.

“Fatalities have not increased for two quarters now, but we have far more work to do to save lives and address the crisis on our nation’s roadways,” said NHTSA Acting Administrator Ann Carlson.

via NHTSA

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is updating its longest-running crash test to address a growing gap in the protection provided for front and rear occupants.

In vehicles from model year 2007 onward, the risk of a fatal injury is 46 percent higher for belted occupants in the rear seat than in the front.

“The original moderate overlap test was our first evaluation and the lynchpin of the Institute’s crash testing program,” said IIHS President David Harkey. “Thanks to automakers’ improvements, drivers in most vehicles are nearly 50 percent less likely to be killed in a frontal crash today than they were 25 years ago. Our updated test is a challenge to manufacturers to bring those same benefits to the back seat.”

via IIHS-HLDI

Low temperatures eat away at an EVs range, but ZF says there’s a fix. Enter the heated seatbelt concept, which is supposed to enable a range gain of up to 15 percent when used correctly in an electric car.

The company says its heated belt warms up immediately after the car starts moving and that it offers an “all-around warming” effect on the driver and passengers, especially when it’s used in conjunction with the vehicle’s heated seats.

Martina Rausch, who is responsible for new seatbelt developments at ZF, added that “when the passengers take off their thick winter jackets, the seatbelt lies closer and directly against the body and the restraint remains at optimal function in the event of a crash.”

via InsideEVs

By Ed Pierce, FMW Brand Acceleration

Happy New Year!

There’s no better way to wrap up last month’s column, “Negotiating a High-Wire Marketing Balancing Act,” than with some key marketing goals you should be pursuing in 2023.

According to McKinsey & Company, “clear KPIs, such as a volume of new customers or specific revenue goals, ensure that everything is measured and evaluated.” 

No matter what marketing goals you set, it’s important to have a plan for how you’ll achieve them. Depending on your marketing goal, you may have a range of strategy types to choose from.

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Fleet managers are facing more pressure than ever to adapt and modernize their fleet in all ways — from reducing emissions to upgrading vehicles, to optimizing routes and keeping their drivers and communities in which they work safe.

By Ed Dubens, CEO/Founder, eDriving

Digital service identifies operating costs, carbon reductions, fleet recommendations

Lightning eMotors, an EV fleet provider, released a new Fleet Planner that recommends to each operator the best Lightning vehicle for their network and also provides analytics on the operating costs, carbon emissions reductions, charge rates and other information related to switching to that vehicle.

“One of the challenges facing fleets seeking to electrify is a lack of reliable information about how commercial EVs will perform under various conditions and how big an impact they will have on key metrics such as operating cost and carbon reduction,” said Nick Bettis, vice president of marketing and sales operations at Lightning eMotors.

via Freightwaves