Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article entitled “Heists Targeting Truckers On Rise”. The story outlines the increase in trucking freight theft since the current recession started. Being that most decisions to implement telematics systems are driven by ROI models I have been pondering the concept of reduced insurance rates for transporting freight if security and tracking technology is implemented on the trailer. At the Telematics Update Fleet & Asset Management conference this past November in Atlanta I asked some of the insurance industry participants if they had been looking into this sort of offering. All of them responded that they were currently focused on » Continue reading
Commentary
Time to Ease the Development Process
December 21, 2009 by Leave a Comment
A long time, respected colleague of mine, Stefan Gudmundsson of Telit, has a published a feature article in the current addition of M2M Magazine. This article provides an excellent roadmap for any company that is considering developing its first M2M application. Stefan has done an excellent job of integrating both the design and business requirements of an application in to a simple to understand primer on the topic. Anyone who is just starting out in M2M would do well in taking this primer to heart as it will help in cutting through the current buzz or hype and potentially save you much expense and heartache downstream. » Continue reading
Cash for Clunkers: a Missed Opportunity for Telematics, Stimulus, and a Smarter Nation?
September 4, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Despite the ecological value of incentivizing the swapping of low mileage cars for higher mileage cars, there has been some questions over the economic value of the Cash for Clunkers program. Many are wondering if the program only served to pull forward manufacturing demand that would have soon developed anyway. I have been kicking around the following questions: would there have been more value in the program if there were additional incentives for purchasing cars that had telematics systems? Besides the obvious personal and societal advantages regarding safety and security, could cars equipped with telematics potentially be more efficient because of better routing afforded by these devices and their value added services? Could the telematics systems be used to gather real life data » Continue reading
Notes from Telematics Detroit 2009
June 9, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Having just gotten settled from my return from the 2009 Telematics Detroit event, I have some observations: 1. This year’s event appeared to be the biggest yet. I don’t have the official statistics, but the room where the main event was held appeared to be at least twice as large as in previous years and it was pretty much filled for the keynote sessions. 2. Due to the well known challenges going on in the automotive industry I didn’t really know what to expect attitude or “buzz” wise. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the vast majority of attendees were very positive. It seems that the broad area of telematics – in this case encompassing safety and security, infotainment, and navigation systems – is providing some positive momentum in the industry. 3. The audience continues to » Continue reading
Telematics: could the Toyota sticky accelerator bring the mainstream media and consumers on-board?
Today’s New York Times has an Op-ed piece by Robin Chase, the founder and former chief executive of Zipcar. Mr. Chase puts forth the proposition that a simple solution to getting out ahead of potential safety issues such as the current Toyota accelerator problem is real-time access to vehicles’ “black boxes” via wireless applications. In the Op-ed piece, he states: “Aberrant engine and driving behavior would leap out of the carmakers’ now-large data set, allowing them, if necessary, to conduct recalls much earlier. And, in exchange for your contribution of anonymous data, carmakers could send you driving benchmarks aggregated from your peers…”. As I and others have presented multiple times at various » Continue reading