NAFA Foundation President Claude Masters, CAFM®,Touts Strong Directives for the Not-For-Profit Fleet Organization
During the Chapter Appreciation Luncheon on April 24, an individual who is well-known to NAFA membership took the stage to let I&E attendees know of great things on the horizon. NAFA Foundation President Claude Masters, CAFM, described the changes the organization took on recently, as well as the strategic goals it has set for itself in the near future.
"The NAFA Foundation is different from NAFA in that the Foundation is a charitable organization," Masters said, "meaning that we have the ability to accept donations that are tax-deductible for the donors. So the NAFA Foundation can – and should – play a vital role in collaboration with NAFA to develop and conduct objective, valuable, research for the fleet industry."
Tesla’s Autopilot Statistics ‘Not Exactly Right’
Although Tesla's Autopilot has been involved in two fatal crashes in the US, Tesla spokespeople have continued to say that The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has found the technology to reduce crash rates by 40 percent.
Now NHTSA says that’s not exactly right—and there’s no clear evidence for how safe the pseudo-self-driving feature actually is.
Tesla hasn’t been transparent with its own numbers. “You would need a rigorous statistical analysis with clear data indicating what vehicle has it and what vehicle doesn’t and whether it’s enabled or whether it isn’t,” says David Friedman, a former NHTSA official who now directs car policy at Consumers Union.
Read the article at Wired.
GM and Amazon Partnership More Than ‘Junk in the Trunk’
The General Motors partnership with Amazon provides an opportunity to generate revenue and profitability for GM, and an efficient way to deliver the online retailer’s packages to more than seven million GM vehicles.
Using vehicle and passenger data would empower automakers to collect revenue on everything from package delivery and software updates to route planning and insurance analytics to reduce costs.
“We believe that investors do not fully grasp the potential for auto companies to monetize their position as ‘landlords’ of mobile real estate and the primary owners of vehicle and passenger data,” Morgan Stanley says. “The end state of the connected car business model is that car companies are highly incentivized to keep as many cars switched ‘on’ as possible.”
Read the article at The Detroit News.
Disable Your Connected Car’s Digital Tools Before You Sell it
After Ashley Sehatti sold her 2015 Jetta back to a Volkswagen dealership, she didn’t understand why she still received monthly reports and hadn’t realized that VW puts the burden of disabling access to Car-Net on the customer when they decide to sell or exchange a car — even if the car is going back to a VW dealer.
You wouldn’t sell a smartphone to someone else without wiping your data, so the same should probably go for your car.
"With the advent of services like CarPlay and Android Auto and forward-thinking automakers like Tesla entering the industry, the pressure to add more technology to cars has never been higher. But oftentimes, this means legacy automakers are working with technology and speeds that they might not be used to, which has led to some bumps in the road for both companies and customers."
Read the article at The Verge.
Uber’s ‘Terms of Service’ – Read the Small Print
A lawsuit filed by two women who say that that Uber failed to protect them from predatory drivers, is being challenged by Uber on the grounds that all consumers who sign up for its service agree to settle disputes by arbitration when they agree to the company’s “Terms of Service.”
Consumer advocates say such policies leave consumers and workers at the mercy of an arbitrator who receives a paycheck from the same corporation that consumers are trying to fight.
"Consumer groups have previously voiced concerns that forced arbitration clauses may make their way into the self-driving cars being tested by Uber and competitors. A bill currently championed by the tech and car industry, which would quickly expand self-driving car testing, may allow companies to require forced arbitration should their technology fail on car owners, car safety groups warn."
Read the article at Consumer Affairs.
