Future Federal Fleet Gains at Risk Under New Decentralized Fleet Management Regime
By Adlore Chaudier Ph.D., CFFM, Associate Vice President, Federal Fleet Consulting Services, Mercury Associates
Last year, the Trump administration reversed a decades-old trend toward the centralization of federal agency fleet administration, a move that may prove to be problematic because of a lack of strategic expertise at the agency level to improve fleet operational efficiency and which flies in the face of proof that centralized fleet management is a better approach.
The clear trend in the industry has been and remains toward more rather than less consolidation. And to varying degrees, most public sector organizations have developed a centralized fleet management program.
Hyundai to Set Up $4-Billion Joint Venture to Develop Driverless Cars
Hyundai announced Monday it’s setting up a $4-billion autonomous-driving joint venture with Aptiv, the company spun off from what used to be the parts division of General Motors. The two companies will join forces to develop the technology needed to put robotaxis on the road by 2022.
Hyundai will be contributing $1.6 billion in cash and $400 million in services, R&D and intellectual property for its 50% share. Aptiv will hand over intellectual property and 700 employees, and the two promise they’ll have an autonomous-driving platform by 2022.
“We always viewed this as highly complex, as very challenging,” Kevin Clark, Aptiv’s CEO, said in an interview. “It’s an extremely complex solution that you need to develop, and the wider the use cases, the more complex it actually becomes.”
Read the article at The Washington Post.
AFLA Celebrates!
AFLA celebrated its 50th anniversary in style at its 2019 Annual Corporate Fleet Conference in Phoenix last week.
In addition to the fine educational sessions, dynamic networking and engaging keynote speakers, AFLA honored some of the industry's brightest and best.
Erin Gilchrist, director of fleet for Safelite AutoGlass, was this year’s winner of the Fleet Manager of the Year award and Kenneth Jack, VP of fleet operations at Verizon, was honored as Fleet Executive of the Year.
AFLA celebrated four new inductees to AFLA’s Fleet Hall of Fame: Theresa Rogazine, recently retired VP for fleet procurement at Johnson & Johnson; Joe LaRosa, former SVP at Merck for global fleet management; and two late industry leaders, Bud Morrison, AFLA’s first president, and Bob Miesen, one-time SVP GE Capital Fleet and the originator of floating rate fleet finance.
AFLA's Fleet Visionary Award, sponsored by Merchants Fleet Management, recognized new voices in fleet management.
NETS Annual Strength IN Numbers® Fleet Safety Benchmark Conference
Arlington, VA: October 9-10, 2019 -- Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel
NETS annual conference is an opportunity to share road safety case studies, new research, and emerging issues with employer road safety peers. Conference participants include companies from diverse industries, representing a collective global fleet of more than half-a-million vehicles that travel nearly 11 billion miles annually.
This year’s conference agenda and topic selection is shaping up to be one of NETS most comprehensive on record.
There is still time to register!
eDriving Wins Fleet Safety Product Category in Brake’s Australasian Fleet Safety Awards
The award was presented for eDriving’s innovative smartphone-based fleet driver risk management solution, Mentor by eDrivingSM.
“It’s fantastic to see our risk management product, Mentor, continue to excite our customers worldwide and in particular in the Australasian market where we have been working locally now for over 10 years in partnership with Zurich Risk Engineering supporting their customers’ primary safety mission – to help protect their drivers while driving for work purposes. Exciting day at eDriving – ripper!” said Cory Fee, eDriving’s Vice President, Customer Success, AMEA.
