General Motors Co. in Detroit today announced its OnStar Vehicle Insights can now be used with most non-GM vehicles via a plug-in adapter. The expansion of services means fleet customers can utilize OnStar Vehicle Insights across their whole lineup, regardless of vehicle make or model year.
The rollout seeks to help fleet managers save on business operations, monitor fleet vehicles, and keep drivers safe using only one telematics platform.
The OnStar Vehicle Insights Fleet Adapter, created by GM’s Global Innovation team, plugs into the OBD-II port of non-GM vehicles, as well as GM vehicles built without OnStar hardware and model year 2014 or older GM vehicles.
Once the connection to the adapter is established to the vehicle and to the OnStar Vehicle Insights mobile app or website, fleet managers can begin receiving vehicle data on the OnStar Vehicle Insights platform. The offering is designed to lower the cost of vehicle maintenance while keeping fleets up and running.
“Our goal is to help make fleet management as easy and efficient as possible for our current and future customers,” says Ed Peper, U.S. vice president of GM Fleet. “We know many customers have mixed fleets, and we believe there is significant benefit in streamlining the process and monitoring a whole fleet using our singular platform.”
With OnStar Vehicle Insights, fleet managers and drivers have access to a suite of features designed to improve overall efficiencies, productivity, and safety, including:
- Vehicle Locator: Provides the location of fleet vehicles in real time, including geofence boundary alerts.
- Vehicle Health: Provides vehicle mileage, oil life, and fuel efficiency, as well as preventative service prompts and maintenance notifications.
- Driver Behavior: Displays driver behaviors and trips, and sends alerts around specific events like exceeding a specified speed limit.
- Performance Insights: A simplified performance dashboard aggregates data and presents trends that are helpful for business operation.
- Remote Commands: Allow drivers to lock, unlock, and remote start a vehicle from the OnStar Vehicle Insights website or mobile app when keys are not readily available.
- Daily Trip Summaries: Allow drivers to maintain and reference trip history in an organized manner.
Also available starting today through the OnStar Vehicle Insights platform is In-Vehicle Coaching, a new virtual coaching feature created to help fleet managers keep their drivers safe. When activated, In-Vehicle Coaching provides real-time verbal cues to drivers, including seat belt, acceleration, speeding, and braking alerts.
Set by the fleet manager, the alerts are designed to encourage safer driving habits. In a recent pilot, In-Vehicle Coaching helped drivers decrease hard braking by 26 percent, hard acceleration by 76 percent, and speeding over 80 miles per hour by 93 percent.
The expansion of OnStar Vehicle Insights, part of GM’s suite of fleet solutions, is the company’s latest step in implementing its growth strategy by creating software-enabled services that create holistic, innovative solutions for customers’ entire fleet.
For fleet customers who already have electric vehicles and to make the transition to electric fleets seamless for future customers, GM recently announced OnStar Vehicle Insights’ integration into the Ultium Charge 360 fleet charging service.
OnStar Vehicle Insights, including its Fleet Adapter plug-in and In-Vehicle Coaching, is available to customers in the U.S. and Canada.
Since the introduction of General Motors’ fleet telematics solution, OnStar Vehicle Insights, fleet managers have received nearly 3.5 million notifications and details of almost 16 million trips covering more than 246 million miles.
For more information on OnStar Vehicle Insights and its new offerings, visit OnStarVehicleInsights.com. For help with determining the right solutions and products for your fleet, visit www.onstar.com/businesssolutions or email an OnStar Fleet account executive at OnStarBusinessSolutions@gm.com.
Launched in 1996, OnStar is a wholly owned subsidiary of GM Holdings that offers emergency, security, and navigation services in Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac models. OnStar offers a range of subscription services such as automatic crash response, emergency services, and stolen vehicle assistance.
