By Mark Boada, Executive Editor

Despite its highly touted benefits, North American business fleets are lagging behind other markets in embracing car-sharing, still a relatively small but booming phenomenon, especially among younger consumers around the world.

That’s the view from a round of interviews with some key players and observers of the nascent car-sharing market.

One big reason for the lag: for the most part, unlike government and academic fleets, business fleets don’t pool their vehicles – they assign them for permanent use by a single driver. As such, drivers generally regard their vehicle as a benefit, and many drivers are allowed to drive them for personal use, some even by members of their immediate family.

Apart from the possibility of reducing some fleet drivers’ productivity, taking away drivers’ assigned vehicles in exchange for access to a pool represents a cultural change many business fleets don’t want to undertake for fear of losing top employees or reducing their ability to recruit.

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By Art Liggio, President and CEO, Driving Dynamics

Since 2008, the AAA Foundation has published a highly informative, eye-opening report titled: Traffic Safety Culture Index.

Included are annual survey results identifying drivers’ attitudes and behaviors related to traffic safety. Working with fleet safety professionals across the country, I have found that many are not aware of this report. I encourage anyone responsible for, involved in or concerned about fleet safety to become acquainted with the analysis provided in the Traffic Safety Culture Index to better understand the trends in driver behavior and corresponding safety challenges.

This report clearly indicates that our cultural attitude toward traffic safety is being compromised and the worsening crash statistics over the past few years bear this out. As fleet operators, we are in a unique position to change this culture as we have the benefit of managing and communicating with a captive audience.

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The Washington Post

For many drivers, a trip to the gas station is a forgettable inconvenience that occurs once or twice a week. The solution: a Silicon Valley company known as Yoshi, a gas-delivery start-up billing themselves as “Uber for gasoline,” functioning like a mobile gas station, using “field technicians” to fill up vehicles when they’re not being driven.

Yoshi has also begun offering customers other gas station staples, such as oil changes, tire checks, car washings and brake pad replacements. Using the company’s app customers interact with field technicians and an artificial intelligence bot named “Rachel,” which helps them schedule services.

Read the article at The Washington Post.

Car and Driver

Going the wrong way on a divided highway against traffic has dire head-on collision consequences. Ford has a relatively simple solution that could help the problem: sign-recognition technology.

Ford simply tweaked its existing road-sign recognition software to enable it to read Do Not Enter signs and alert the driver to their presence. Then it flashes a note to “check driving direction” in the vehicle’s gauge cluster or head-up display. So far, the technology will only be available in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.

Read the article at Car and Driver.

By Andrew Boada, Editor at Large

Over the past year, battery electric vehicle (BEV) manufacturer Tesla has recorded losses of $2.7 billion, as much money in the past 12 months as the total it lost over the previous five years.

The losses, combined with massive quality control and delivery issues, have begun attracting quite a bit of media attention and have caused a number of increasingly vocal analysts to predict that the electric car manufacturer’s days may be numbered.

So, what’s behind Tesla’s troubles? Do they have broader significance for BEV technology in general? And if Tesla’s troubles ultimately prove fatal, would the company’s demise spell the end for the BEV?

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USA Today

If you have a keyless car, your key fob uses an electronic signal to automatically lock/unlock, and in some models, even start your car. Thieves can easily intercept that signal. How can you prevent it?

There are a few easy ways to block criminals’ amplified signals. You can buy a signal-blocking pouch that can hold your keys, such as a shielded RFID blocking pouch. The free option is to use your refrigerator or freezer.

Read the article at USA Today.

Fortune

A patent application filed in Europe by Apple, gives a peek into an intriguing product it may offer in the future: a smart windshield. Apple’s smart windshield could use external sensors to detect the current speed as well as the posted speed limit, displaying both on the windshield.

Another feature could use internal sensors to detect stress in drivers and passengers by monitoring eye motion, heart rate, body posture, etc. The windshield would then automatically adjust its display to potentially reduce stress, although it’s not clear from the patent how the display would accomplish this.

Read the article at Fortune.

By John Wysseier, President and Chief Executive Officer, The CEI Group, Inc.

Perhaps as dramatic an invention as the printing press, the internet has engendered revolutionary changes in the way people work, shop, learn, communicate, receive and share information.

For some industries – like newspapers and retailing — it’s been a disruptive force that threatens the extinction of enterprises that rely on traditional technologies.

The key to this generational trend is that the internet connects people to each other, faster, with more abundant information than ever before. But, like a new life form that evolves rapidly, the internet has morphed to connect more than people to each other, but people to devices and even devices to other devices.

It’s called the Internet of Things – IoT for short — and it’s become one of the latest new battlefronts for business. Like all battlefronts, it presents both opportunities and challenges for virtually every industry, and only those who win the battle to integrate with it successfully are likely to survive and thrive.

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Digital Trends

The ridesharing revolution will most likely have a huge impact on the evolution of cities and mobility around the world. One unexpected finding is that shared transportation will not differentiate along national boundaries as much as it will between cities, suburbs, and rural areas.

“People will switch between modes of transportation. People could switch from public transit to autonomous ride-sharing solutions or even take bicycles. If you go to the outside of those cities, the picture changes. You’d have public transportation to get you out of the city core, but public transportation will not be sufficient. You’ll have private cars and privately-owned shared autonomous cars,” said Andreas Breiter, associate partner at McKinsey & Company

Read the article at Digital Trends.

CNBC

New technology is often met with fear, and self-driving cars are no different. Americans are hesitant to trust autonomous vehicles, and there is also worry about the number of jobs the new technology might eliminate.

Yet the autonomous vehicle industry is creating jobs, especially as multiple companies race to put the first self-driving car into action.

“Autonomous cars are going to largely eliminate jobs seekers weren’t interested in and create opportunities in work that people will find more rewarding,” said Ian Siegel, co-founder and CEO of ZipRecruiter.

Read the article at CNBC.