By Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketer

Customer experience (or CX, in marketing jargon), has gotten a lot of attention over the last few years, primarily among retail marketers. All it means is that a company has focused its people, processes and technology to deliver exceptional personalized experiences across all customer touch points.

The better a company understands, anticipates and consistently exceeds customer expectations, the more likely it is to win and keep business, improve market position, and drive profits.

As today’s B2B buyers are increasingly influenced by their consumer experiences and have begun to demand similar experiences in their professional lives, more businesses are elevating service as an important contributor to growth. They are investing in both traditional and digital capabilities to sustain—and monetize—customer engagement.

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Forbes

Americans might not realize it, but there’s a race going on between the United States and China for leadership in autonomous cars.

America enjoys clear superiority in technical innovation — right now. Google and Tesla are leading the way, with start-ups like Otto and Cruise Automation coming on fast. But China has its own secret weapon: No other country in the world can match its ability to create industries via powerful, top-down mandates.

“Our biggest advantage is that we, as a socialist nation, can pool resources in a major mission,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said this week.

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By Janice Sutton

We were delighted to catch up with our friend Jeff Schlesinger at the recent NAFA Institute & Expo and talk with him about his newly-formed company, JS Consulting.

We interviewed Jeff on a number of occasions when he was Managing Director – Global for GE Fleet Services, and were keen to learn about his new company as well as his thoughts on trends within the global fleet market.

Jeff says, “I think the biggest trend is the evolving use of the vehicle to maximize revenue and minimize costs. The old model of a salesperson having a fully-dedicated vehicle, driving to a customer with a trunk full of goods and services is not necessarily the model that we will see in five years.”

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National Insurance Crime Bureau

California’s Modesto Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) had the nation’s highest per capita vehicle theft rate in 2015, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau’s (NICB) latest Hot Spots report.

Moreover, California owned eight of the top 10 Hot Spots for vehicle theft in 2015.

NICB’s Hot Spots report examines vehicle theft data obtained from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) for each of the nation’s MSAs.

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New York Times

Fully automated cars don’t drink and drive, fall asleep at the wheel, text, talk on the phone or put on makeup while driving. With their sensors and processors, they navigate roads without any of these human failings that can result in accidents.

But there is something self-driving cars do not yet deal with very well – the unexpected. The human brain is still better than any computer at making decisions in the face of sudden, unforeseen events on the road – a child running into the street, a swerving cyclist or a fallen tree limb.

Here are five situations that, for now at least, often confound self-driving cars and the engineers working on them.

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Independent

Norway will ban the sale of all fossil fuel-based cars in the next decade, continuing its trend towards becoming one of the most ecologically progressive countries on the planet, according to reports.

Politicians from both sides of the political spectrum have reportedly reached some concrete conclusions about 100 per cent of Norwegian cars running on green energy by 2025.

According to Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv, “FRP will remove all gasoline cars”, a headline which makes reference to the populist right-wing Framstegspartiet, or Progress Party.

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International Business Times

Microsoft wants to make cars autonomous and turn them into mobile offices to make our commutes more productive, but it stresses it will not be producing its own vehicles, and will instead look to partner with established car companies.

This approach is similar to Alphabet’s Google, which despite running a fleet of autonomous prototypes, says it will not sell these vehicles to the public.

Meanwhile, Uber is working on its own vehicles, and soo too is Apple, albeit secretly.

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Washington Post

Google has revealed that its self-driving cars don’t just know how to change lanes and run yellow lights — now, they can even honk the horn like a regular human.

As the company’s test cars trundle around on public roads, Google has begun training its computers to rely on the horn in specific scenarios, such as when another driver is backing out of a space and can’t see that Google’s vehicle is approaching. At other times, it’ll honk when another driver starts edging into the occupied lane.

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The Car Connection

Air pollution is a major problem in many city centers. So, what’s the solution? The powers-that-be in Paris, France think it’s banning older cars.

That ban goes into effect on July 1 and will affect cars registered before 1997. (Motorcycles registered before June 1, 1999 will be included in the ban, too.) Those vehicles will be prohibited from entering Paris’ city center during weekdays.

Those who violate the law will be hit with a fine of 35 euros ($39)–a sum that will rise to 68 euros ($76) for passenger cars and 135 euros ($151) for heavier vehicles as of January 1, 2017.

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By Steve Lehto, Road and Track

I am an attorney and have been representing consumers for over 24 years in the state of Michigan. By far, the most frustrating calls I get at my office involve used car purchases where I find myself explaining the same things over and over again to people I cannot help. There are usually steps you can take to protect yourself before the purchase but often there is nothing you can do after.

The answer lies in trying to not get ripped off in the first place. Here is what you can do when car shopping to protect yourself.

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