Connected Car News: NICB, Ferrari, LexisNexis, Daimler Trucks North America, Geotab & Wejo

In connected car news are NICB, Ferrari, LexisNexis, Daimler Trucks North America, Geotab and Wejo.

VINCheck by Photo from NICB

The National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), the insurance industry’s association dedicated to predicting, preventing, and prosecuting insurance crime, proudly announces an upgrade to its popular VINCheck® service. A new photo feature allows users to take a picture of the vehicle identification number with any camera-ready device, and VINCheck will take care of the rest.

Ferrari F40 at LEGOLAND

LEGOLAND® Parks, a global leader in family entertainment, and Ferrari, the world’s most recognizable luxury sports cars brand, announced the world’s first LEGO® Ferrari “Build and Race” interactive attraction is coming to LEGOLAND® California Resort in spring of 2022. Featuring a life-size Ferrari F40 model developed by the LEGO® Group, Build and Race puts guests in the driver’s seat as they make their way through the “garage” to the “racetrack” using their creativity and imagination to build, test and race their own LEGO Ferrari.

LexisNexis® Risk Solutions announced a new analysis of the relationship between Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) features and U.S. auto insurance claims, which counters common insurance industry sentiment that ADAS repair costs offset ADAS loss cost benefits. The results are featured in the new white paper, “True Impact of ADAS Features on Insurance Claim Severity Revealed,” which examines the effect of ADAS on claim severity in a multivariate setting. The findings represent the second half of a two-part study that also examined the relationship between ADAS and claims frequency. The combined findings show that the change in claim severity in vehicles with ADAS were minimal; however, the decrease in claim frequency was significant. The LexisNexis Risk Solutions study shows an overall reduction in loss cost by coverage, which can warrant ADAS feature-based policy discounts and benefits for both drivers and insurers.

ADAS Reduces Cost

Results from the LexisNexis Risk Solutions multivariate analysis reveal that by having at least one core ADAS feature, there was a reduction in loss cost. Loss cost will vary – more or less – depending on the combination of core ADAS features and how each specific combination of features performs. According to the white paper, having ADAS feature information can result in the following:

• 23% reduction in Bodily Injury loss cost;
• 14% reduction in Property Damage loss cost; and
• 8% reduction in Collision claim loss cost in ADAS-equipped vehicles compared to non-ADAS vehicles

The level of warranted discount varies based on which ADAS features are present. Understanding which vehicles have which ADAS features, combined with loss cost performance, equips insurance carriers to apply appropriate discounts to the individual and the vehicle, delivering on consumer expectations along the way. In developing LexisNexis® Vehicle Build, LexisNexis Risk Solutions identified core ADAS features that were shown to have the highest impact on claim frequency.

KeepTruckin’s New Compliance Management Suite

KeepTruckin, the leader in fleet management technology, announced the launch of its new automated compliance management suite. The Compliance Hub and mobile Fleet App offers a 360-degree view into a fleet’s compliance health to help organizations manage data more efficiently, resolve violations faster, and stay compliant while on the go. Additional features that help fleets solve their most pressing compliance challenges include advanced AI technology to help automatically resolve unidentified trips in real-time, and a native integration with Compliance, Safety, and Accountability (CSA) scores to proactively reduce risk and lower costs.

With the current labor shortages and strains on the supply chain, Hours of Service (HOS) violations are up almost 35% from 2020 to 2021. With nuclear verdicts citing HOS violations on the rise, skyrocketing insurance costs, and a tight labor market, it has never been more critical to proactively manage compliance practices to stay in business — and keep operations running safely and efficiently.

To drive significant bottom-line and safety improvements within their organizations, fleets can now automate compliance and take a proactive approach to risk management using three components unique to KeepTruckin’s platform:

The Compliance Hub & Fleet App: The Compliance Hub is an intuitive new dashboard experience that offers fleets deeper HOS insights with violation breakdowns, driver leaderboards, and cycle trends over time. Critical compliance information can also be viewed in the KeepTruckin Fleet App, where managers can see driver logs and duty status on the go to seamlessly maintain compliance and resolve issues faster than ever before.

Smart Trip Match: Organizations can now resolve unidentified trips through automation with our Smart Trip Match feature. Proprietary AI models analyze historical patterns to automatically assign the correct driver to the correct trip for managerial review. Upon confirmation, drivers are then instantly notified to help save time for safety departments and prevent violations.

CSA Insights & DRIVE: Critical CSA data integrated with driving data helps organizations seamlessly identify risk factors putting their business in jeopardy. Proactive CSA score monitoring helps fleets reduce risk with forecasted CSA scores, intervention thresholds, and violation breakdowns to automatically identify opportunities to improve a fleet’s CSA score, or address pressing issues that can negatively impact it. CSA Insights and the proprietary DRIVE risk score can be used together to design a proactive safety program that can help reduce accidents and costs, improve driver performance, and retain top performers.

“Complex regulatory and safety requirements can hold organizations back,” said KeepTruckin Director of Product for Safety, Compliance, and Insurance, Abhishek Gupta. “Our new automated compliance management suite helps unlock the potential of these organizations by maximizing the safety and productivity of their operations. This is another step forward in our continued commitment to helping fleets take a proactive approach to risk management that transforms their operations and ultimately makes our roads safer for everyone.”

KeepTruckin customer Expressway Logistics has been able to focus on realizing its goals of scaling operations and expanding their fleet by using KeepTruckin’s automated compliance management suite. “We were able to reduce our insurance rates by 25% per driver,” said Ellen McDonald, Safety Director at Expressway Logistics. “We cut our time managing compliance in half. Plus, we reduced Hours of Service (HOS) violations by 67%, and our CSA score dropped from 99 to 59. This all makes a huge impact on where we can take our business.”

DTNA with Platform Science Launches Virtual Vehicle

Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA), in collaboration with Platform Science, a leading connected vehicle platform, announced the launch of Virtual Vehicle™, the first open OEM platform that enables fleets to access telematics, software solutions, real-time vehicle data, and third-party applications directly from their vehicles. In addition, the platform provides the tools to manage those applications, connectivity, and the mobile devices drivers need to use them. Virtual Vehicle represents a platform-first approach that provides customers greater value and a significantly expanded choice of software-enabled services.

Geotab Inc. (“Geotab”), a global leader in IoT and connected transportation solutions, announced that it has been certified by Verizon Mobile Broadband Priority (MBP) Services – giving priority wireless network access to Geotab’s eligible customers, such as first responders, government agencies and utility providers, during emergency situations. The Geotab GO9 is the first fleet telematics device to earn Verizon Open Development Certification including Mobile Broadband Priority Services.

When disaster strikes or threatening situations arise in communities, public safety agencies need assurance that they can stay reliably connected to do the job at hand and keep the public safe. When seconds matter, how effective that response is depends on their ability to communicate critical information without the concern of congested network delays. With Geotab GO devices now certified with Verizon MBP Services, first responders and public safety agencies are provided priority access to cellular and internet signals. The wireless priority service, primarily available for public agencies in the U.S. with an eligible North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code, provides Geotab customers with priority network access to Verizon’s 4G LTE data network.

“Total network congestion can derail first response efforts,” said Neil Garrett, Associate Vice President of Business Development, Government at Geotab. “Congested communications networks as the public takes to their phones in a crisis can turn an emergency into a large-scale catastrophe, putting the lives of all concerned in serious jeopardy. We are pleased to offer the Verizon Mobile Broadband Priority Services for public safety organizations on Geotab devices that remove non-public safety users to help first responders get the data and network resources they need when it matters most.”

MBP Services is only available to qualifying agencies with a Geotab GO9 Device—either an existing device or a new order on the Verizon Network—and an eligible NAICS code. Once an agency is qualified, future versions of Geotab devices will also receive priority. By knowing that their agency has access to higher priority network access over public users during critical times or high network usage scenarios, Geotab customers can benefit from the confidence and peace of mind that comes with such connectivity.

Public agencies interested in learning more about Geotab and Verizon MBP Services, including how to qualify, can reach out to government@geotab.com. To learn more about Geotab first responder solutions, visit https://www.geotab.com/industries/police-first-responders-fleet/.

Wejo Partners with Microsoft

Wejo (the “Company”), a global leader in connected vehicle data,  reported additional progress in its strategic partnership with Microsoft in which Wejo’s robust suite of data assets are being built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, enabling near real-time data exchange and the ability to deliver a range of new solutions to the broader mobility sector. The partners demonstrated this progress in a video.

Wejo has to date ingested 12 trillion of data points from nearly 12 million connected vehicles, including information on locations, road conditions, and weather, which are now combined with the data security, privacy and scalability of Azure. As the volume of Wejo’s data continually grows, Azure AI capabilities enhance predictability such as helping to reduce road traffic accidents through near real-time data modelling. The growing library of data generated by Wejo across the U.S. and Europe can be leveraged across a broad array of use cases across the mobility, automotive and mapping sectors. The cloud-based infrastructure on which this collaboration is based has become more crucial as OEMs increasingly rely on data insights harnessed from individual vehicles.

“The strategic partnership between Wejo and Microsoft continues to produce unique technical and commercial benefits for the broader mobility sector,” said David Burns, CTO, Wejo. “The Microsoft Azure gives Wejo’s extensive data and growing library of data assets the power and scalability to enable customers to make better business decisions, provide differentiated experiences, find new revenue streams and drive future innovation across the broader mapping and automotive sectors.”

“Wejo is ideally positioned to address the automotive industry’s growing mobility data problem through its OEM relationships and growing library of data assets,” said Sanjay Ravi, General Manager of Automotive, Mobility and Transportation Industries at Microsoft. “With Wejo’s data on Azure, together we can deliver at scale the solutions that the industry, individual vehicle users and everyone involved in the mobility and transportation ecosystem have long needed.”

Richard Barlow, Founder & CEO of Wejo, continued: “The fact that Wejo now ingests over 17 billion data points a day, every 1-3 seconds, from 11.9 million vehicles on Wejo’s platform, is unlocking real value for the challenges such as interaction between driven and driverless vehicles. Wejo’s ability to show the trends in electric vehicle usage – and the lack of infrastructure in cities to accelerate the adoption of low emission vehicles – is data for good in action.”

In addition to its partnership with Microsoft, which is a strategic investor in Wejo, the Company also has partnered with Palantir Technologies (NYSE: PLTR) to power the leading connected vehicle data platform; Sompo Holdings (TYO: 8630) to bring the power of connected vehicle data to the APAC region; and General Motors (NYSE: GM). Additionally, Wejo also has business relationships with 17 automotive OEMs and Tier 1s. Wejo has agreed to a business combination with Virtuoso Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ:VOSO); when completed, Wejo will become a public company.