What Comes After Gasoline?
Anyone who believes battery-electric or hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles don’t have a future greatly underestimates the bullheadedness of Californians. This special breed of American lives in a state wracked by drought, choked with traffic, and bisected by a fault zone. Yet Californians think there’s no better place to be.
For further proof of Californians’ obstinate nature, note that the small but growing market for zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) there has been 24 years in the making. After spinning its wheels in the GM EV1 era, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which regulates state air quality, has finally found the traction to effect a major automotive and cultural shift with its ZEV mandate.
The question is, which one of these technologies (battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) or hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs) will win in the long run?
Alternative Fueled Vehicles: First Victim Of Low Gasoline Prices?
Gasoline prices having dropped below $3 a gallon nationally, the future of automobile efficiency programs should be considered critically. For those of tender years, we have been here before: the price drop after 1986 saw the rise of minivans and SUVs, which meant that fuel efficiency for the fleet stabilized after a decade of declines.
Price is the best motivator of efficiency, and despite all the breast beating about advertising and consumer brainwashing, they essentially respond rationally: prices rise, people choose higher fuel efficiency, prices fall, people de-emphasize it.
This is not addiction, its economics.
Telogis Earns Deloitte’s “Technology Fast 500” Ranking for Seventh Straight Year
Fueled by accelerating market demand and the company’s ongoing global expansion, Telogis joins an elite number of companies that have earned a spot on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 list of the fastest growing companies in North America for its seventh straight year. Telogis provides a comprehensive SaaS-based connected intelligence platform for companies that require commercial navigation, real-time work order management, dynamic routing, telematics and mobile integration services for their mobile workforces.
“The companies ranked on the 2014 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 continue to set the bar for their industry higher each year,” said Eric Openshaw, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP and U.S. technology, media and telecommunications leader. “There are so many exciting products and smart thought leaders driving this list. We congratulate the Fast 500 companies and look forward to seeing them continue their momentum into 2015.”
"Telogis’ connected intelligence applications and services have a transformational effect on the way our customers run their mobile enterprises, and the adoption rate will only increase,” said David Cozzens, chief executive officer, Telogis. “In order to meet the demand for what have become mission-critical business applications, we will continue to invest in R&D and expand into new industries while attracting and retaining the best people in the business.”
The Telematics Explosion
Telematics are everywhere you look these days, and they're also on the minds of pretty much every fleet manager out there. And given that maybe 20% of fleets, at most, have incorporated them thus far, the time for telematics is most certainly upon us.
On Thursday and Friday of this week, I will be attending Connected Fleets USA 2014 in Atlanta, and I'm pretty excited to immerse myself in learning more about the various benefits that telematics have to offer fleets -- and network with some of the key players.
Speaking of telematics, we've got some great content on the topic in today's issue, including a video of Rob Donat from GPS Insight talking about how you can easily optimize your drivers' routes, every day. We're also featuring a video from Kevin Moore from Telogis talking about how you could almost think of connected vehicles as smart phones on wheels, and an article on why fleet tracking is so important during winter driving conditions.
Keep watching this newsletter -- Fleet Management Weekly -- for more updates and info on telematics!
Ted Roberts
COO & Chief Content Officer
Are Smallest New Crossovers Safer Than Small Sedans?
Compact crossovers like the Honda CR-V and Ford Escape have long been popular sedan substitutes for small or growing families. And now, at last, there’s a new crop of even smaller crossovers on the way.
Led by the Buick Encore, and soon to include the closely related Chevrolet Trax, as well as the Honda HR-V and Mazda CX-3 (and potentially also already including the MINI Cooper Countryman and Subaru XV Crosstrek), this segment of the market is staged for rapid growth—by empty-nester couples, small families, and even those who just want a little extra space in their small commuter car.
