Keeping Your Fleet in the Game
By Mike Quimby, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Element Fleet Management
For college basketball fans, this time of year means only one thing – March Madness. The tournament determines the national champions of college basketball, but to get there the teams have to make the Final Four. To make it that far, each team needs to stay in the game. Like the coaches and players, it’s critical that managers actively work to keep their company’s fleet in the game.
Check out our strategies for ensuring your fleet goes the distance:
NADA Releases 2016 Used Vehicle Market Forecast
In a news conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center in conjunction with the 2016 NADA Convention and Exposition, Jonathan Banks, NADA Used Car Guide's executive analyst, presented a used vehicle market forecast for the year which included numerous insights by the industry's leading provider of vehicle valuations.
According to Mr. Banks, the supply of used vehicles, credit conditions, and new vehicle incentives will reverse course from where they have stood the past five years.
Toyota, Microsoft Partner to Develop Car Tech That Drivers Want
Toyota has created a new data analytics company in partnership with Microsoft with one aim: bring new Internet-connected services into the car without overwhelming the driver with technology.
These new services produce a steering wheel that monitors a driver’s heartbeat and a seat that becomes a scale, vehicle-to-vehicle technology enabling cars to communicate with each other to observe hazards ahead, or a virtual assistant that uses predictive analytics to determine not only where the driver is headed, but the best route to avoid traffic or favorite food suggestions along the route, according to Toyota and Microsoft.
Additional new products could also focus on safety, connecting the car to smart devices in the home, or to city infrastructures designed to ease traffic congestion and locate free parking.
MIT Has a Crazy Vision for a Future Without Stoplights
MIT researchers have devised a way to eliminate traffic lights, improving traffic flow to the point where twice as many cars could be on the road.
Paolo Santi and Carlo Ratti, researchers working in MIT's Senseable City Lab, are proposing a slot-based traffic system to replace traffic lights.
Here's how it works: instead of approaching a traffic light, drivers would approach an intersection with several slots, like a row of toll booths.
First-Ever IIHS Headlight Ratings Show Most Need Improvement
The Toyota Prius v is the only midsize car out of 31 evaluated to earn a good rating in the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's first-ever headlight ratings.
The best available headlights on 11 cars earn an acceptable rating, while nine only reach a marginal rating. Ten of the vehicles can't be purchased with anything other than poor-rated headlights.
A vehicle's price tag is no guarantee of decent headlights. Many of the poor-rated headlights belong to luxury vehicles.
