Rental company Europcar is to equip
its entire fleet of vehicles with real-time telematics monitoring by 2023, enabling it to detect whether cars have been involved in an accident and the speed they have been travelling among other information.
The company will implement its Connected
Cars programme in partnership with Telefónica
and Geotab following a pilot in Mallorca in 2018. It will roll out in France this year.
Through
the partnership, Geotab and Telefónica will provide Europcar with access
to engine data, driving behaviour and GPS location, including information on distances travelled, mileage, speed, acceleration and fuel level.
The company
says the information will be used to “improve customer experience and optimise
business applications and internal processes such as fleet inventory
management, vehicle delivery and collection, vehicle maintenance and vehicle
return”.
Olivier
Baldassari, chief countries & operations officer of Europcar Mobility
Group, said: "Europcar Mobility Group sees technology as a strong
enabler of both operational excellence and value creation. We chose Telefonica
and Geotab for their agile, service-oriented solutions, their
cutting-edge mobility and fleet management technologies as well as their
international coverage.”
Neil
Cawse, CEO of Geotab, said: "Collaborating with industry leaders
around the world allows us to better enable fleet ecosystems to develop
maintenance and sustainability programs that can help optimise the cost of
ownership of each vehicle.”
The
group operates under four brands, Europcar, Goldcar, InterRent and Ubeeqo, in more than 140 countries.