The Impact of Connected Cars on Leasing Companies
There is massive change being seen in the automotive industry right now. In addition to the on-going testing of self-driving cars in real traffic conditions, there is also huge growth in the number of connected cars on roads which will also have an effect on fleet insurance cost.
Data shows that in 2014, less than a quarter of cars on UK roads were connected but that is changing very quickly and by 2018, at least two thirds of cars will be connected. The number of connected cars on the roads is already having an impact on leasing companies, who are increasingly being expected to provide more sophisticated data to their customers.
Corporate director at Lex Autolease, Craig McNaughton, had the following to say on the matter –
“The sheer volume of change that’s going on in our sector is causing uncertainty and what our customers are saying to us is ‘take away that uncertainty; help us predict the future’. And, the only way that they can predict the future is through data intelligence.”
Due to the increasing availability of big data that connected cars provide, fleet managers are now looking to access data that will help them assess how they’re performing compared to competitors and how they can improved.
McNaughton went on to say –
“The difference from the one-off reports that we produce is it’s a live data system, with some analytical algorithms that allows customers to access comparable data on an ongoing basis.”
However, leasing companies need to be able to distil and decipher data from variable sources; creating multi-layers of information. “We need to be agnostic,” said McNaughton. “We’ve got to be able to pinpoint the critical incidents; predict and pre-empt what is happening with the fleet and then find the trends over time.”