Trimble’s green fleet management system, caribo’s new carpooling app, and more news from Telematics Munich 2009
Managers can follow their fleet in street view, satellite view, or aerial close-up. Thanks to a “Driver DNA Box,” they also can see exact CO2 emissions, real-time miles-per-gallon stats, vehicle fault codes and mileage information, all of which makes GeoManager 9.1 a ‘green’ fleet management system.
Our system “enables fleet managers to know their emissions, then start to see which vehicles are most effective on which journeys, which drivers are speeding or driving inefficiently or dangerously, and, through changing vehicles and retraining drivers, mitigate these fuel-wasting behaviors,” says Andrew Yeoman, Trimble’s managing director MRM. “With a 15 percent difference in fuel use between running a well maintained vehicle and not, GeoManager can help a fleet save on fuel and therefore drastically reduce their carbon footprint.” British Gas [http://www.bg-group.com/Pages/BGHome.aspx] announced they would install the new GeoManager—and the Driver DNA Box—across its fleet, becoming the second enterprise in the U.K., after BT, to adopt the new technology. Other enterprises that use GeoManager internationally are AT&T, Cox Cable, Qwest, SBC, Telstra, and Linfox.
In a similar vein, U.S.-based inthinc Technology Solutions [http://www.inthinc.com/] released its tiwi driver safety system. The tiwi device, which can be easily mounted in a truck, offers in-vehicle verbal mentoring in real-time for driving behaviors such as speeding, seat belt usage, sharp turns, hard stopping, and rapid acceleration. It also keeps managers apprised of fleet information. Valvoline [http://www.valvoline.com/] announced a partnership with inthinc to offer a program that guarantees improvement in miles per gallon for truck fleets that use Valvoline oil in conjunction with the tiwi driver safety and fleet management solution. This “fuel proof guarantee” covers a 120-day customer demonstration period and is offered to fleet operators with a minimum demo of 30 trucks.
Tele Atlas [http://www.teleatlas.com/index.htm] signed an agreement with Denver-based Intermap Technologies [http://www.intermap.com/] to implement Intermap’s 3D elevation data in its navigation devices. Intermap’s NEXTMap data provides a uniform and accurate geospatial base layer that will enable Tele Atlas to conflate other visual assets, such as building models, roads, and landmarks, into a more realistic visualization product. As the TU Intelligence Brief reported last week, Tele Atlas signed a deal with Samsung to bring Tele Atlas maps and products to all Samsung GPS-enabled devices.
Consumer electronics companies Nokia, Mentor Graphics, NEC Electronics, and Wipro Technologies announced they had become core members of the GENIVI Alliance [http://www.genivi.org/], a collaborative association dedicated to driving the development and broad adoption of an open source in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) reference platform. A fully formed GENIVI Open Source Platform would create an alignment of independent software vendors, operating system vendors, and silicon vendors to increase delivery efficiency for IVI solutions.
Finally, German-based Scientific Computers has released caribo [http://caribo.mobi/#start], a mobile carpooling application to connect drivers and passengers through mobile phone positioning. The application allows registered users to find rides or offer rides on the fly, wherever their location. “With traditional ride sharing applications, users need to plan their ride in advance,” says Ralf Ander, manager of business development at caribo. “caribo is different in that it offers users the possibility to immediately find a ride.”
As caribo envisions it, drivers will receive a flat fee of €2.00 for picking up a passenger, plus an additional mileage price (though nothing as steep as a taxi). For quick usage, the application presents two buttons “I’m a driver” or “I want to go home!”, each of which relays the driver’s or passenger’s current location to other users on the network. “A driver who is already on the road can receive a message on his mobile phone that someone in his vicinity is looking for a ride,” says Ander. “The driver can answer instantly and pick up the passenger. Traveling with caribo's ride sharing community is both ecological and economical. By enabling ride sharing for short and long distances, caribo helps to protect the environment and offers an extremely affordable way to travel any distance.” The caribo app will be available on the iPhone by the end of November.
Andrew Tolve
