Today's Pickup: Samsara introduces Driver Efficiency Scores To Help Improve Driving Habits

Good day,

Industrial internet of things (IIoT) provider Samsara announced the introduction of driver efficiency scores to improve driver behavior and increase fleet safety. Fleets can monitor different driving parameters and use Samara's fleet efficiency reports to train drivers and reduce fuel consumption, while increasing overall operational sustainability. 

Samara's report aggregates data across several criteria, including instances of truck idling, speeding, cruise control, coasting, and high torque. That apart, it also records ‘anticipation events' that measure the number of braking events where the time from the accelerator to brake is less than a second. It also measures the time spent by truckers driving at the most efficient RPM, which directly corresponds to high fuel efficiency. 

Samsara believes that this report will help fleets identify inefficient driving habits, incentivize good behavior and facilitate effective feedback. 

Did you know?

The shipments of core capital goods from the U.S. dropped 5.4% in April, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Core capital goods shipments are used to calculate equipment spending in the government's gross domestic product measurement. Core capital goods shipments fell 1.2% in March.

Quotable

"We see a historic fall in global energy investment, but the biggest hit is to the shale industry. It has always been under pressure, but now access to capital and investment confidence is drying up."

– Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, while commenting on the possibility of U.S. shale sector investments dropping by half this year.

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China's Baidu finishes building ‘world's largest' test ground for autonomous vehicle, smart driving systems

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DHL acquires stake in Link Commerce developed by MallforAfrica

DHL has acquired a minority stake in a turn-key e-commerce company that grew out of MallforAfrica.com – a Nigerian digital-retail startup. (TechCrunch)

Final Thoughts

Japanese venture capital firm Softbank Corp. SOBKY has entered into an alliance with two other Japanese companies – Pacific Consultants (PCKK) and Oriental Consultants Global (OCG) – to help road maintenance programs in the U.S. by leveraging real-time data gathered from connected vehicles. In 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers graded the country's roads very poorly, pointing out that 45% of U.S. roads were poor – a situation that has continued to worsen every year. 

With connected cars projected to account for over 70% of all vehicles sold in North America in 2020, data generated from these vehicles can be used across a variety of use cases. This Japanese collaboration will witness Softbank pooling its experience in the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics along with the road infrastructure acumen of PCKK and OCG, to create and sell insights to government bodies that are responsible for fixing road defects. 

Hammer down everyone!