Smoothing Out Those Bumps in the Road
The semiconductor shortage and resultant supply chain impact have caused some bumps in the road for many fleets.
Teri Ross, vice president of sales and client relations for PARS, talks with Ed Pierce about the role transport services are playing in this climate. In Caution: Not All Transportation Quotes are Created Equal, Teri gives us a valuable, detailed tutorial on how fleet managers can accurately evaluate transport quotes. There are significant differences that can make a big impact on a fleet’s bottom line.
With new vehicles harder to find, some fleets are acquiring used vehicles or keeping existing vehicles in service longer than they had planned. Samir Mehta, chief product officer at mobile maintenance company Wrench, tells us about their approach to reducing downtime while keeping costs in check.
Enjoy this issue and please check in with FMW daily for important updates!
Janice Sutton
Editor in Chief
Lordstown Doesn’t Have Money to Build the Endurance EV Pickup
Lordstown Motors, an EV startup based in Ohio town, doesn't have enough money to start building trucks by the end of the year as previously promised. That revelation came in a regulatory filing on Tuesday and was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Lordstown had originally promised that it would start building its Endurance pickup truck, with a promised 600 hp and roughly 250 miles of range, early this year. Fleet customers were supposed to get first dibs at the trucks, and Lordstown said private customers could expect delivery by the end of the year, but by this spring it was clear production had never begun. The Endurance was unveiled last summer with then-Vice President Mike Pence in attendance.
Even without its apparently serious financial problems, Lordstown was facing new and stiff competition on the EV pickup front. Ford unveiled an EV version of its best-selling F-150 last month and claims to have raked in tens of thousands of pre-orders in the first days after the reveal.
Read the article at Car and Driver.
Nauto Announces New AI Enhancements for Its Driver and Fleet Safety Platform
New collision avoidance and safety automation features enable more effective risk mitigation for drivers and fleet managers
PALO ALTO, California, June 8, 2021 — Nauto® today announced several new artificial intelligence (AI) and feature enhancements to its Driver and Fleet Safety Platform.
The latest advanced AI capabilities from Nauto include automatic detection of four new, high-risk driver behaviors in the vehicle that trigger real-time alerts for greater driver and fleet safety and risk reduction, while also helping to streamline operations. Nauto will be presenting the new features today at DRIVE 2021.
How to Reduce Car Accidents
No matter the technology, there is no better time than now to have technology be the catalyst to drive social change, to improve the outcomes of our use of vehicles while allowing us to continue to use them to help our economies grow.
By Aron Solomon, Esquire Digital
The CDC Report on Global Road Safety is some remarkably sobering reading. According to the report, the leading cause of death for people under 55 is automobile accidents. While passenger vehicles are something that we now take for granted in the United States, they literally drive economic development around the world.
The threshold issue is why we still have so many accidents, particularly fatal ones.
Traffic Deaths Soar During Pandemic
By Mike Sheldrick, Senior Editor
The Covid-19 pandemic may have emptied roads, tanked the oil market, and resulted in somewhat cleaner skies.
Nevertheless, astonishingly, despite the reduction in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in the U.S. in 2020, deaths increased: from just over 36,000 in 2019 to 38,680 in 2020, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). This translates into a 23% increase in fatalities per million miles traveled.
These numbers generally agree with earlier estimates in March from the National Safety Council. The reasons, according to NHTSA: Risky driving behaviors, including failure to wear a seat belt, speeding, and drinking while driving.
For fleets, the question is how long these conditions will persist even as we are vanquishing Covid-19 and how to combat all the factors that lead to the kind of driving behavior that, in turn, resulted in these numbers. It requires renewed emphasis on the importance of safety.
