By FMW Staff
August 9, 2023
Fleet Management Weekly often interviews major players in the fleet space, from companies that deal with EV charging solutions to ones that enhance driver safety through the use of risk management tools. This week we got to speak with Neville Boston, founder and CSO for the company Reviver.
Reviver has brought a totally new idea to market: a digital license plate named the RPlate. Reviver’s RPlates are legal to drive nationwide, but the company is currently working to expand availability state-by-state throughout the US. The digital license plate technology has created some surprising benefits for fleets by streamlining registration and offering an all-in-one platform, RFleet, to manage and monitor vehicles.
Here’s what we learned from our sit-down with Neville Boston:
Tell me a bit about your history and why you founded this company.
I am a first generation American whose parents are from South America. Many of my relatives had businesses of their own, so I’ve always had an entrepreneurial mindset. Before Reviver, I had a marketing company in Manhattan. 2008/09 was supposed to be a breakout year, but then the entire economy contracted. I decided I needed to be in a business that could keep being renewed regardless of what was going on in the economy.
I talked to a good friend of mine who was in state government in California, and we started looking at state-owned assets that were being underutilized. He had just been at the DMV a couple of weeks earlier and was bemoaning how it took up almost his entire day. That’s when I realized something that the state owns that is updated every year: the license plate. The license plate is the identification mechanism for the car. If you can take a situation that people normally don’t like, such as going to the DMV, and you can streamline it, then you may have something.
We started by setting up a meeting with the deputy director over legislation for the DMV for the State of California. The timing was excellent because they were looking to go more online. He got us in touch with his counterpart at the California Highway Patrol, and we had a meeting with him and several officers. We told them our idea of a digital license plate, and they were really impressed that we were coming to them early and wanting them to be part of the process. They worked with us by opening up their test track and letting us test the plates there before they were put out to the public. So that’s how the business started, and then it basically grew from there once we had the stamp of approval from the DMV and CHP.
How will your product be helpful for fleets?
From a fleet perspective, I think the RPlate is an amazing invention. It really allows them to streamline their compliance and track where their vehicles are. What we did that was different from many other solutions was that we spoke to fleets of all sizes: large, medium, and small. We wanted to get their pain points so that we could address the real issues that people had and so that we didn’t overbuild a solution that didn’t really make sense. We also have conversations every couple of months with different fleets to get feedback. We want to make sure we’re always adding value.
Geofencing
One of the issues we found out really quickly was batch registration. We found a way to register vehicles in batch, which we offer through the Connect platform. Batch registration streamlines the process and creates one less headache to deal with. Fleets also wanted to be able to geofence where their vehicles were and timestamp it. For example, a maintenance fleet might think they’re spending X number of hours at a particular site, but they don’t really know that for sure. By geofencing your trucks in a certain area and by the amount of time they spend there, you know how to properly build for how you’re utilizing those services. We’ve had customers tell us that geofence and timestamp helped them understand what their business was and build more effectively based on that.
With our RFleet service specifically for commercial and corporate fleets, we offer a turnkey approach that focuses on compliance. Fleets can update the plates remotely so you don’t have to put stickers on tags anymore. They can update their compliance in real-time. If there’s an issue with compliance, it normally takes 30-45 days to transfer vehicles. And if drivers can’t make their deliveries, they’re losing money. Our solution cuts that time down to just a couple of days. The compliance aspect is a game changer to helping fleets stay on the road and make money.
Then from a maintenance perspective, it’s helpful to know whether a particular vehicle needs an oil change or brake service or anything like that. When you’re doing your walk-around, you can see information on the plate about the status of the vehicle. It also provides a great tolling solution, as everything is streamlined on the same platform.
Your plates are legal to use in all 50 states. Is this true? What states are you currently in and what states are you looking to move into next?
We’re currently selling in California, Arizona, Michigan, and Texas for commercial fleets. We’ve passed legislation in Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, and Florida for governmental vehicles. We have legislation in process in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and we’re planning on having another six or seven states come on next year.
Our plan by the end of this calendar year is to have access to 50% of the driving population. That basically involves hitting the top 10 vehicle markets in the US. By 2025, we plan to have access to almost the entire continental United States, then look at Europe after that. Our big focus right now is to make sure that we have a presence wherever the majority of fleets are. If there’s a strategic reason to be in a particular state, then we’ll have those conversations and look at expanding.
Do you have a success story or two that you can share?
We’ve been able to work with a fairly good-sized commercial fleet that deals mostly with going out and fixing vehicles. They needed to streamline the registration of their vehicles because they kept getting dinged when the drivers weren’t putting tags on them. We streamlined the process to allow them to update it remotely, taking it out of the hands of the driver and putting it back in their hands. They also really enjoyed the geotargeting so that they knew the time they were spending and properly bill.
We had another fleet who had a big issue with time stamping. Our technology allows them to have better fidelity on how the vehicles were being used, and we were able to report back in real time what was going on. We’ve even been able to help with vehicles getting stolen, because we can put ‘stolen’ on the plate and track that. We’ve had several vehicles returned because of that.
To learn more about how Reviver’s RFleet can help fleets remotely manage vehicle registration for your entire commercial or corporate fleet, eliminate physical tags forever, and streamline fleet operations, click here.
