Summary

The Fleet Management service offers companies, which own BMW cars, to track their employees’ driving behaviour and grade them in a points based system. Based on these driver points, the company can reward or penalize its employees to encourage safer driving. The motivation for the team in developing this service is to save costs for the company by reducing accident rates and increasing vehicles’ parts’ lifetime.

 

Business potential

Managing the fleet is an essential part of everyday business for companies. It directly affects businesses in several ways, e.g. for keeping the quality of service up for customers and reducing costs by efficient usage of vehicles. Based on these we can say that this service has a big business potential and, by extending its features, is able to overcome its competitors.

 

Feasibility

Considering that it is possible to track vehicles and analyze driver behaviour with BMW CarData API, we consider the realisation of this idea feasible.

 

Existing solutions

 

There are several companies operating in this business domain. We present some of them here.

 

Fleetio[1]

 

Fleetio lets companies accurately track their drivers and analyze their behaviour. It also generates driver scoreboards to reflect driver safety rank.It is also possible to see driver rank for select period of time.

One interesting feature of this service is that it can detect if the driver is using his/her mobile phone while driving, which in turn will affect driver’s rank.

 

Trimble[2]

 

This service, along with providing complete visibility of fleet 24/7, provides a way to manage vehicle maintenance schedules and identify the causes of excessive carbon emissions.

It also helps to improve fuel costs by proactively monitoring the engine.

 

IMS Fleet Management[3]

 

This service provides extensive fleet management by also providing tracking preventative maintenance needs, and holding inventory for parts which lets the company keep track of part part stocks and purchasing. It is also possible to generate a detailed cost-analysis report.

 

AVRIOS[4]

 

This solution provides more features on cost analysis. It can generate a report to show Total Cost of Ownership, along with fuel consumption monitoring.

 

Other features include contract management which lets the user see the finance, insurance and maintenance contracts at a glance.

 

Suggestions

 

While Fleet Management idea is effective use of BMW CarData API, we think that it needs some enhancements in order to keep relevant in the market. Possible extensions might include showing drivers real time suggestions on how to improve their driving behaviour, and how to help the company to save on fuel costs (e.g. by showing more efficient route to the destination).

 

On the other side, it can also give suggestions to companies on how to efficiently organize their vehicle resources in order to increase customer satisfaction and reduce expenses. Furthermore, apart from showing drivers’ rankings, it can generate in-depth reports to allow the management team to better manage their drivers.

 

References

 

[1] https://www.fleetio.com/drive/features

[2] http://www.trimble.com/fsm/fleet_management.aspx?tab=Benefits

[3] http://www.mtcpro.com/fleet-maintenance.htm

[4] https://www.avrios.com/en/full-feature-list

 

Tags: Mobility-Services

I liked below points about the pitch video that I watched some days before on the below link,

the things that I like about this pitch are,

1. Development of storyline and clear conveying of idea
2.  Already started prototype and have initial customers.
3. Convincing power and call for action.

 

Tags: Mobility-Services

Climate change is a fact and currently, cars are responsible for around 12% of total EU emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) [1]. Even if our view of mobility are changing and electric cars are about to do their big entrance, cars are still a treat for the environment. So is there something that every car owner can do for the environment? The answer is YES, by driving more eco-friendly. But the environment is not the only winner in this scenario, there are actually several winners here.

Eco-driving has several upsides. By eco-driving, the car uses less fuel, which not only has a smaller impact on the environment. It will save you money, reducing car maintenance expenses and time! Mid-2005 a french system was developed, which provided driver information on smoothness, speed and gear management, produced a 15% reduction in fuel consumption [1].

Which leads us to the second winner; Everyone else.
Not only will you try to make the earth a more sustainable place to live on. But also by eco-driving, the roads will be a safer place. Many of the eco-driving strategies overlap with just safe driving strategies. For example, looking ahead to drive smoothly, maintaining a consistent speed and driving at a slower pace are all eco-driving and safe driving strategies.

So our main goal is to encourage car owners to drive more Eco. With the incitement to save more money, hopefully, this spur will make that more people eco-driving. The following effects will be positive, the roads will be safer and the environment will benefit from less CO2 emissions.

Who will we reach our goal? Our approach to this will be quite different from other “fuel saving”-apps, by trying to make a game out of with. Because just gamification is a powerful tool to improve performance and increase motivation and has been proven to work in other areas [3]. There are also research within this area, which shows that people’s performance improves if they were presented with a number that increased at an increasing velocity. So our idea is by gamification try to encourage people to eco-drive, but it will not be only fun. We will also provide the users with valuable information and suggestions to improve their driving and decrease their fuel consumption (read: save money).

So this will give us three winners. First place; The environment which will not have to struggle with the high amount of CO2. Second place; Yourself, first of all, the environment you breathe and live in will be better and you will drive more safely which will decrease the risk of getting in an accident. And finally, you will save money by decreasing your fuel consumption. Third and last but not least, Everyone else around you. They will be safe on the road with you and live in the same better world with you.

[1] European Commission. Reducing CO2 emissions from passenger cars. https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/transport/vehicles/cars_en
[2] https://www.racq.com.au/cars-and-driving/driving/greener-motoring/racq-ecodrive-research-study
[3]Adi Gaskell. How Gamification Can Drive Workplace Performance. 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adigaskell/2017/02/21/how-gamification-can-drive-workplace-performance/#1f42e9a7f8e3
[4]Luxi Shen, Christopher K. Hsee. Numerical Nudging: Using an Accelerating Score to Enhance Performance. Vol 28, Issue 8, pp. 1077 – 1086. 2017. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617700497

Tags: Mobility-Services

Introduction

According to Bundesanstalt für Straßenwesen (BASt) Federal Highway Research Institute, September 2016 report major number of accidents involves teen drivers. In the pursuit for making driving safe, we explored ways to reduce teen drivers accident. Parental control could be way to do so. The main advantage of our idea is to give parents the ability to control the driving style of their children, and guide them in the journey from teen to more adulthood. Most of the sports car like BMW are expensive. Even a minor scratch could cause a major burden on the owner pockets. Thus most parents would not like to hand their expensive cars to their kids who are still considered as “risky” on the roads.

 

 

[A basic supervision.. ensuring safety of teen drivers]

The basic concept behind the application is to access customized data about the car . We developed that idea further and said this would be a perfect concept for new drivers on the road who are not using their own car. Most new drivers start by driving the car of their parents. To keep the parents calm and give them also the ability to check on their car and their child, parental control would suit perfectly.

[A agreement between Parents & Kids – No enforcement from external world]

Parental Control will provide the parents only with the data that the children agree on. We want to encourage the children and the parents to collaborate on that topic. The parents lend their car to their children and the children have to stick to some rules to be allowed to use the car.

[Privacy of teen drivers are protected]

Firstly, we would provide features as current location and current speed to the parents. A very important fact is, that parents can only access information. The parents can not access and control the car from outside in any form while their son/daughter is driving the car. This is very important to mention that for understand our main interest with this application. No video recording or such features are provided. The application ensure privacy of the teen drivers.

[Safe driving is reworded]

Further on we thought about extending this application and add a bonus for the young driver. Parents can assign legal challenges to their children as for example not driving faster than 120 km per hour for 2 weeks. If the child accomplished that he will get some kind of bonus (like free tickers of Allianz Arena)

Our main interest with this application is to encourage a more mindful and careful driving style of young and inexperienced drivers. It is not so much about the concern for the car but for the child that should decrease for the parents.

[Reference]

• http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a4681/special-report-overwhelmed-and-undertrained-65-1-roa0813/
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3071724/The-car-TEEN-safe-mode-Chevrolet-fits-parental-controls-Malibu-model.html
• https://www.motor1.com/news/75559/3-arguments-for-and-against-parental-controls-in-cars/
• https://www.wired.com/2015/05/people-spoken-put-parental-controls-cars/
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-technology-lets-parents-set-controls-for-teen-drivers/

Tags: Mobility-Services

This week we want to summarize our idea “Secure Parking”. We also want to analyse the feedback we got and also give a view on what comes next.

Our idea “Secure Parking” is based on Bosch Secure Truck Parking. The main difference is that cars have a lot more spots to park and we do not want to create separated car parks or car lots. Our idea is to analyse police and insurance data about burglary and thefts and create a grid to determine if an area is secure or not. As feedback we received that police might not be allowed to give us the needed information and a crime database of Chicago was mentioned. We were able to find this kind of database actually for the whole US and Canada. In the Screenshot you see a part of the map for Chicago.

We could also create a map like this. The Bundeskriminalamt probably also has useful information for us, as there are statistics online available grouped by federal states. Maybe they have more detailed information which is allowed to be published if we ask. Analysing the data and creating a grid will be done with analytical methods. With this information, the knowledge where the car is actually stated and where the driver wants to go we can suggest a secure area to park at the destination point. It will also be possible to show if the current position is secure to park or not, if the driver did not insert a destination to the navigation system. This way we can try to prevent burglaries by routing the drivers to secure parking areas.

For the future we have to think about how to analyse the data exactly. We did not yet think about the value of the data during time. For example, if a burglary five years ago has the same impact making an area unsafe than a burglary just one week ago. We also have to think about where to get the latest data from and how to join old and new data. In the feedback we were also suggested to open our service to other occasions which could harm the car. For example including weather forecasts to prevent the car from damage by hailstorms.

Sources:

http://www.bosch-secure-truck-parking.com/?ln=de#0
https://www.crimereports.com/agency/chicago-police-department-il#!/
https://www.bka.de/DE/AktuelleInformationen/StatistikenLagebilder/PolizeilicheKriminalstatistik/PKS2016/InteraktiveKarten/08KfzDiebstahl/08_KfzDiebstahl_node.html

Tags: Mobility-Services

Last Monday, our team presented three posters and two additional napkins to our customer from BMW and the other groups within the Mobility Practicum in order to validate, extend and finalize the current ideas.

 

Both of the outlined project ideas – in the following section – focus on the evaluation of data gathered from the newly developed BMW CarData API. Having data sets such as fuel and energy consumption of last trips, current mileage and others, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) regarding the driving style and driving behaviour can be calculated. These KPIs can be used for different services and platform models:

 

1) Company car pricing through KPI management of driving behaviour

 

“Don’t be gentle with a rental.”

 

Problem statement: Monthly fees of company and rental cars rely on the average fuel and energy consumption within the company or rental fleet. Employees that show a careful driving behaviour are compelled to pay the average prices even though they would occupy lower rates due to their positive driving style.

Solution: Therefore, our first idea focuses on the evaluation of the driving behaviour of an individual driver within a defined company car fleet. This enables company car managers to oversee peaks and lows of KPIs from trips of a specific employee. Based on the gathered parameters, monthly rental fees can then be recalculated. Thus, a fair pricing model that recognises thoughtful and environmental-friendly driving is established.

By now, identified KPIs include the average fuel consumption of a combustion engine powered vehicles, the energy consumption of electric vehicles, the average speed and general risk level. During the event on Monday, additional KPIs regarding the strain of the battery, the carbon-dioxide emissions and recorded accidents have been elaborated.

Beyond that, journeys of company car fleets that do not have a one-to-one vehicle-to-driver allocation could automatically be recorded and cleared within our solution, whilst ensuring compliance with legal standards. Therefore, driver logbooks are unneeded due to an automatic journey recognition within the platform. This feature has already been implemented in most company car management platforms, which have to rely on data from external devices, “dongles”, that are attached to the cars ODB-interface. This intermediate step is omitted in our service.

Feasibility: From a business and financial point of view, the company car market comprises a great volume in number of vehicles and expenditures [1]. Further, major trends such as electrification and environmental sustainability in general are reflected within most of the above stated KPIs.

 

 

2) Insurance comparison platform based on KPIs regarding the driving behaviour

 

Problem statement: Most vehicle insurance contracts refer to the age and number of accidents for pricing the insurance premiums. However, defaults of vehicle insurances – meaning the probability of an accident and the subsequent insurance payments – are mostly based on the experience, previous accidents and also the general driving style. According to a survey of the Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft e.V. in 2016 [2], fast and aggressive driving are major causes of accidents. Therefore, insurance premiums should be adapted based on the assessed driving KPIs.

Solution: Similar to our first idea, the insurance comparison portal encompasses almost identical indicators (KPIs) like that of the company car pricing service. Here, private vehicle drivers can register their BMW ConnectedDrive account on our platform and authorize the service for continuously collecting data of their vehicle. Just like other platforms that target different industries such as fluege.de or check24.de, users are provided with best-price offers in their desired search area. Whereas fluege.de evinces cheapest flights for customers on a specific date, our service uses the vehicle data and calculated KPIs to display the cheapest insurance providers and contracts.

Feasibility: In Germany, most vehicles are still in private ownership [3]. In addition, car owners can change their insurance on a yearly basis leading to a high number of potential customers. Moreover, insurance contracts can be processed and signed on our platform so that the user experiences a comfortable change of insurance.

 

 

In the next days, our team will assess both services in detail. Hence, one of the latter presented ideas will be demonstrated as a paper-based prototype.

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

[1] Expert interviews

[2] Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft e.V (2016). https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0ahUKEwigrvvZpbLXAhWIIewKHY2DAR0QFgg3
MAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fudv.de%2Fdownload%2Ffile%2Ffid%2F9619&usg=AOvVaw1pFZ41J4shyz1GwJLrNAz

[3] Statista/KBA (2017). https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/483781/umfrage/pkw-bestand-in-privaten-haushalten-in-deutschland/

Tags: Mobility-Services

Morgan Stanley, a leading global financial services firm that provides investment banking, securities, wealth management and investment management services, this year published a research note that highlights the numerous aspects of their overall thesis on the transformation of transportation. The most radical prediction that their “Global Autos & Shared Mobility” team of analysts made is that Morgan Stanley is “bullish on EV penetration and universally cautious on the long-term viability of the 100-year-old internal combustion engine (ICE) ecosystem, which we believe is in its last generation,” adding that “[w]e expect EVs to account for 50-60% of global light vehicle sales by 2040.”

To put this prediction into context, however, it is ironic to note that the current portion of sales that electric vehicles (EVs) make up for is just 1%, even less than 1% to be precise actually. This sort of puts a question mark over this research. Admittedly however, this research takes into account the changing consumer behaviour: that individual auto ownership preference is ending, along with the dominance of the gas-powered engine.

Image source: https://www.canstockphoto.com/vector-clipart/electric-car.html

So what factors are there exactly that inhibit the launch of EVs in its true sense (as compared to traditional fuel powered cars)? I’d like to first present an interesting response by one of the people we surveyed as part of the need finding task for our project:

(This respondent owns a BMW i3)

Q: “What part of owning an electric car fascinates &/or bothers you the most?”

A: “Although cost-wise running an electric car gives me a much better economical return as compared to the conventional fuel cars I have had over the years, but having to always be on my toes to ensure a charge such that it doesn’t effect my battery’s life is always been a pain. Apart from that I need to make my schedule in such a way that I ensure enough time to get the car charged is also a bother. This wasn’t an issue when I had a petrol car, because it literally just takes minutes to top it up and it is good to go.”

The main points to take away from this response is that there is still a long way to go before people can start “trusting” this new technology in all the possible senses. This is because the convenience in terms of time, effort and reliability, that the EV alternative offers is manifolds more than what EVs offer.

As an example, consider a middle of the line Nissan Leaf SV (which costs $32,000 in the US prior to federal tax rebate, in 2015). It drives about 80 miles before you have to plug it in, compared to a roughly 300 mile range for a similarly sized but lower priced Nissan Juke.

This observation doesn’t even take into account that facts that, at least for now, fuel powered cars offer a better resale value, cost much less in terms of initial investment, the cost less to insure, the general idea among the average consumer that electric cars as changing so fast that buying one now would be investing in obsolescence.

But having said this, I would also like to add that noting the looming factors of changing consumer behaviour and ever-improving battery technology, the future of everyday general use EVs is definitely better. And even in the high-end, luxury and high-performance end of the car spectrum, BMW’s i8, the Porsche 918, the next-gen Acura NSX, LaFerrari, etc. are all flashing red indicators of the future of the supercar market.

 

References:

http://www.businessinsider.de/why-morgan-stanley-wrong-about-electric-cars-2017-5

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/07/time-to-face-up-to-the-electric-car-revolution

https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-people-use-electric-cars-more-Whats-wrong-with-electric-cars

Tags: Mobility-Services

In our last blog post, we discussed about our findings from the interview, which we conducted for our need-finding task. In addition to the navigation, other important area which was mentioned by many users, was maintenance. This invoked our investigation further down the line.

One issue people had was finding out what needs to be fixed in the car without going to a repair store. Some users, with less technical knowledge about the car, pointed that they end up going to repair shop even for small technical glitch. Sometime, these technical glitch could also be fixed at the owner end itself. Moreover, owners in most of the cases, do not have any idea about fair price of the repairs in the repair shop. Sometime, this leads to very high repair costs. Thus owners wished for a service that could answer their questions like “what is actually broken in the car?” and “how much repair would cost?”

Owner also wished for a recommendation for comparing various repairs services using attributes like “quality of service”, “cost of repairs” and “average rating of the ship” etc.

Furthermore, drivers also mentioned that they would prefer to know the issues with the car before it breaks down. It would especially be useful before going for long trips with the car

In conclusion, maintenance is a crucial topic for every driver, especially for the ones with high technical knowledge about the car. Having platforms that help users in mentioned issues would be very profitable solution.

Team: Hangry

Tags: Mobility-Services

This week we had the task to create personas, but what is a persona??

A persona, (also user persona, customer persona, buyer persona) in user-centered design and marketing is a fictional character created to represent a user type that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way. Marketers may use personas together with market segmentation, where the qualitative personas are constructed to be representative of specific segments. The term persona is used widely in online and technology applications as well as in advertising, where other terms such as pen portraits may also be used.
Personas are useful in considering the goals, desires, and limitations of brand buyers and users in order to help to guide decisions about a service, product or interaction space such as features, interactions, and visual design of a website. Personas may also be used as part of a user-centered design process for designing software and are also considered a part of interaction design (IxD), having been used in industrial design and more recently for online marketing purposes.
A user persona is a representation of the goals and behavior of a hypothesized group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesized from data collected from interviews with users. They are captured in 1–2-page descriptions that include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and the environment, with a few fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character. For each product, more than one persona is usually created, but one persona should always be the primary focus for the design.[1]

To create a persona, there are various guidelines on various sites on the internet. One of it could be the following:

For our personas Anna and Michael, we decided to use a mixture of the different questions from the sites

 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_%28user_experience%29

https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html

Personas für Unternehmen erstellen

https://blog.hubspot.de/marketing/buyer-persona-erstellen

Tags: Mobility-Services

While conducting research in the topic mobility services we found out one major impact. Users tend to dislike the native navigation apps in their cars and use instant other navigation services for example google maps. Primarily, because of the easy interface and the traffic notification which is not always available in native navigations.

 

Google Maps App is available on every smartphone with a continuous internet connection and GPS. During, the drive the app compares all of the potential roads and shows the fastest way to get to the final destination. Additionally, it identifies traffics on every potential road and guides the driver to avoid them. A further advantage is that you can type in your destination before heading the road. Some of the native navigation systems are not as usable as Google Maps is. According to the opinion of the users

traffic is not identified fast enough and new updates are not pushed frequently enough. The only disadvantage that users named, was that Google Maps is only usable on the phone and requires to have a phone holder in the car.

 

Another state of art service, which is trending out in the market, is services provided by HERE. HERE is a company that provide high quality 3D map services to companies and individual. It is owned by consortium of German automotive companies, namely Audi, BMW and Mercedes. 3D maps provided by HERE captures information like real time traffic, buildings, parks and network of roads. HERE provides its services to nearly 200 countries, with live traffic information in 33 countries. It also provides 3D indoor mapping of the selected buildings around the world.

 

One distinctive service, launched under the umbrella of HERE, is HERE Auto. What sets this service stand apart from others is the ability to start the navigation even before entering the car and guidance to the destination even after leaving the car. HERE Auto is thus fully contextually aware service when compared with competitors like Android Auto and Carplay. It provides users the ability to store the offline map on a flash drive.

 

Two further services worth mentioning are Traffic Safety Warning (TSW) & Sensor Ingestion Interface Specification (SIIS). TSW alerts driver in advance to en-route traffic so that drivers could take precautionary measures (such as alternate route) on time. SIIS standards enables the use of  sensors data collected from vehicles on the road to update real time traffic signature. It alerts users in emergency situations for example if an accident happens in the vicinity or other traffic obstacles appear. HERE is being used in the trial of fully autonomous car due to its enrich 3D quality map.

 

HERE refine its service quality by drawing data from more than 80,000 data sources (including vehicles). It uses data through panoramic cameras, position sensors and laser technology for 3D footprints. According to wikipedia, it capture 1.3 billion data points every minutes. HERE enables general public to map their city location on its map. This way it enables, people from remote & rural areas to mark their small town/village location, connecting roads on the map. One problem with the remote areas is not many vehicles travel in the vicinity and thus collecting reliable data is a challenging task.

 

Thus, we conclude that in spite of having current challenges in the field of navigation, there is considerable amount of work going on its improvement. The overall picture looks optimistic.

 

[Reference]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_(company)

https://360.here.com/lending-a-hand-and-a-map-to-remote-towns-in-spain

https://360.here.com/in-car-navigation-is-rapidly-changing

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps

https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7200764?hl=en&ref_topic=6379753

Tags: Mobility-Services