How Connected Vehicle Data Cuts Congestion, Lowers Costs, And Improves Driver Safety

Mike Chung: 0:07

Welcome to Autocare on Air, a candid podcast for a curious industry. I'm Mike Chung, Senior Director of Market Intelligence at the Auto Care Association, and this is Indicators, where we identify and explore data that will help you monitor and forecast industry performance. This includes global economic data, industry indicators, and new data sources. Hello and welcome to another episode of Indicators. I'm Mike Chung, and I'm pleased to introduce Aditya Nath, otherwise known as Eddie, to the program. Eddie, welcome to the program.

Hi, Mike. Nice to see you.

And Eddie, tell us a little bit about your role at Stellantis Mobilicites and a little bit about mobilisites, if you would.

All right. So I am Eddie Nath. I head North America sales for all software fleet products for Stellantis, of which Mobilicytes, which is the data business unit of Stellant of Stellantis, is a part of that. So while I was associated with Stellantis uh since the very beginning, but I I was focused on mobilisites. But today, as of today, our charter has uh has enhanced or improved to where we include all fleet products that are part of my portfolio anymore.

That's terrific. And tell us a little bit about the data that you and your team work with.

So Mobilicites processes the data that is generated by all connected vehicles of the Stellantis brand. And as you know, Stellantis has 14 iconic brands globally. We have the exclusive charter of collecting all of this data, processing this data, and making it available to the various stakeholders and customers of uh Stellantis and mobilisites.

That's really fascinating and what reach across the industry. I mean, 14 major brands, I'm sure, from a data architecture and nomenclature and kind of having all those systems talk to each other intelligently and correctly, that would be a huge undertaking. So you mentioned mobilicytes, um, and I understand that your organization has solutions across fleets, across government and transportation, and across insurance. Can you tell me some of the things that have been going on in the fleet space?

Sure. So let me let me take a step back. And our mission as mobilicytes has always been to enable a smarter and a safer world using connected vehicle data. And you know, you talked about the 14 brands. I mean, together uh we have over 14 million vehicles across the globe that are connected and providing us data on a on a you know second by second basis. So, and then uh the other thing is mobilisites was founded on a very simple principle, privacy by design, because we recognize that privacy is gonna be extremely important from a regulation standpoint, from a consumer standpoint. So we are very cognizant of that, and we follow some of the most uh strictest standards in the world. And GDPR in Europe is the golden standard for that, and we follow that even in the US. And US, some of the states are now coming up with their own regulations like CCPA out of California and so on. So we adhere to all of those regulations. And in that framework, we then provide data and data uh solutions to a number of customers. We've broken up our market into four segments, and you you touched upon some of those. So smart fleets is the first one, smart consumers is the second one, and I'll I'll talk a little bit about that. Then we have what we call smart services, which is largely focused on infrastructure planners, public safety, uh governments, road designers, you know, all of those things. And then we have a fourth market segment called Smart Decisions, in which we intend to provide insights from all of this massive amount of data that we collect from all the connected vehicles. So Smart Fleets obviously focuses on fleets, you know, where the fleet managers and operators or the rental car companies or the government GSA, these are some of our largest customers, they use our vehicle data to look at things like, you know, very basic things like vehicle health, safety, uh, maintenance, and those kinds of things. They also look at driver behavior because driver safety is of paramount importance to all of the fleet owners and operators. So they are able to determine through this telematics data if the driver is drowsy, if the driver is uh you know having uh distracted driving going on, or is breaking hard, or you know, turning hard. You know, all of those kinds of behaviors are uh captured through this telematics data. And within the privacy guidelines, we're able to share that information with the fleet owners so that they can provide coaching, they can provide encouragement for improved driving and improve overall safety across the country or across the globe, I should say. So that's one segment. The second segment that I touched upon was smart consumers. And smart consumers is broken up into two major segments. One is the insurance side, and people may have heard of something called usage-based insurance or pay as you drive or pay how you drive, in which with consent, we are able to share your driving behavior, your driving history with an insurance carrier of your choice. So as long as you provide us explicit informed consent that, hey, please share my data with Carrier X, because they are going to quote me a new, you know, new uh insurance rate for my vehicle, uh, we are we are able to share that data. And uh and then so that is a huge segment of our smart consumer marketplace. The other segment is a sub-segment of smart consumers, is all the B2B2C applications you're seeing. You know, parking, charging, you know, so there is a number of these applications that are emerging. And so we do not sell directly to consumers, we are 100% a B2B company, but you know, our B2B clients then share their applications using this data, whether it's for digital tolling, whether it's for uh road usage management, these are some of the new use cases coming about. They share that with the customer. So that's the smart consumer. The third piece is the smart decisions, which I said uh is is anonymized data. So they don't need to know who the drivers are, it's not VIN specific, but these are consumers of data that need to know trends. What is what happens at this traffic light between the hours of 4.30 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. How bad is the traffic, you know, or how bad is the safety at a given intersection? How bad, you know, uh congestion happens if there is a big bears game, you know, in soldier field. You know, so all of those kinds of things, you know, the traffic planners, the infrastructure designers, the traffic engineers for the city or the state or the federal government, they use this data to improve the road safety, improve road design, improve infrastructure design, and so on and so forth. So that data is massively useful uh for these kinds of stakeholders. And then finally, smart decisions is where we are looking at providing insights based on very specific use cases that we can derive from this uh this huge data lake that we have built.

So kind of starting in reverse order, the smart decisions. So traffic management, for example, so monitoring rush hour traffic, monitoring safety intersections where you might have a high volume of traffic. And then that data, that analysis that your team can provide can go back to planning agencies to perhaps engineer, um, introduce engineering solutions, whether it's um traffic calming measures or uh a lane, how a lane is, if there are more lanes or if there's a stoplight. Am I thinking about that correctly, Eddie?

Yes, you are. And in fact, a lot of it also has to do with safety. You know, so if there is an incident or if there is snow or ice on the road, where should the resources be deployed first? You know, all the cities, every city, state, and the federal government are constrained. So, how do you strategically deploy your resources to be, you know, the fastest response or the most comprehensive response to a given situation? So we see that uh it's continually being consumed, this data, and they are making decisions. Oh, there are potholes. I mean, Chicago is known for potholes. And, you know, where are the worst potholes in Chicago? And, you know, how do you where do you send your repair crews first? You know, there's 30,000 miles of roads in Chicago. How do you fix which one do you pick? So there are a lot of decision making that needs to be done in, you know, sometimes in real time, sometimes for planning purposes, where this data becomes really key.

Oh, that's really helpful. And I think about um two examples, one of which you touched on uh uh an event-oriented um phenomenon like a Bears game. And I've heard variations of the Taylor Swift effect on traffic in a city. And and then um similarly to the potholes, when you are um closing a road for construction, what's the right time of day, how many lanes, and that kind of is a a corollary of the Taylor Swift Chicago Bears problem, right? So very, very uh fascinating.

Yeah. It it sure is, and you know, just people don't think about it, but last year there's data that suggests we spent over 400 billion with a B dollars sitting in traffic in this country alone. That's a massive amount of money that has wasted, you know, just because of poor road design or poor planning or you know, poor infrastructure. And, you know, we have to recover that money. So yeah.

Yeah, it it's really it's really um encouraging to see the efficiencies that are being um realized through collection of data and then being able to harness that data through uh analysis to get to some of the solutions we just talked about. And earlier, excuse me, you were talking about the fleet solutions and just kind of again taking that step back. So um fleets that could be a municipal fleet, so the city of Los Angeles and all of their municipal vehicles. It could be the Chicago School District, it could be a rental car agency that is national, it could be um long-haul shipping, so heavy-duty trucks like I don't know, Allied that are going across the country delivering goods. So are there other fleet examples that are worth mentioning?

Yeah. So there is uh the fleet industry is sort of a an ecosystem. And you touched upon some of the key players. Obviously, the rental car companies are some of the biggest buyers of vehicles. Okay. Uh we do not play as talentists in the heavy trucking industry, but you are seeing a lot of last mile delivery. You know, the Amazon trucks and the Cokes and Pepsi's and the U-Haults and FedEx and uh UPS. These are big fleets by themselves that that take that buy vehicles from us. So there is the the uh you know rental car companies, there's the large commercial fleets, there is uh the government has you know over 400,000 vehicles that they manage for uh themselves and the various departments. Uh and then we have the small fleets, you know, the landscaper who has three trucks, five trucks, or the flower delivery shop who has you know seven trucks or ten trucks. You know, so these are all fleets, and you would be surprised how many small fleets there are. Oh, sure. And they form a very large portion of uh of uh of the fleet industry as well. So, and then you know, in addition to the these people needing information and data to manage their fleets, there's a whole surrounding ecosystem, and I'll mention some of the names you may recognize. The fleet vehicles, when they come off lease, they all get auctioned. And Manheim Auction House is one of the largest in the country, or United Rentals, or you know, so there is big side consumers. Then we have the Kelly Blue books and the experience of the world that give you data on or Carfax. So where is all of that data coming from? That all data is coming from the OEMs or the connected vehicles that they service. So there is a there is a massive uh, you know, sort of ecosystem around fleet business because fleet moves, you know, all the goods and and uh and services for us. So yeah. So fleets is a very important market for us. It's our largest market segment today. And uh, you know, and as maybe I mentioned, we have over a million uh vehicles onboarded on the mobilized platform in this short amount of time uh that we've been around.

Uh really uh helpful insights there. And so thinking about just the core data, certainly GPS data. I'm thinking uh location, I'm thinking time of day, and then you've layered on top of that some of the things like distracted driving. So it's fascinating that our phones can kind of sense if it's being picked up, if it's ringing, if we're answering it. But also by that same token, you mentioned things like hard breaking, hard turns. So can you tell me about some of those data points? Because um, like you said, this data is being collected. It can be sent to that fleet operator who can then use that data to kind of coach, inform their drivers of um things they can do to improve or to stay safe.

So this is this is my favorite topic being an engineer by training. So uh before we get into the data, there's just two points. You know, the phone data is is is is available and it's very cheaply available, and a lot of companies use that, but it's not very reliable because it could be my phone sitting in your car. So suddenly it's not, you know. So that's one thing. Um the second thing is uh so the the OEMs have only started connecting their vehicles over the last maybe 10, 15 years. But the need for vehicle data has been around for a lot longer. And so there there are a number of third-party companies that used to install what we call uh, you know, in in common language as a dongle, but it's a third-party piece of hardware that they would install in the OBD2 port of a vehicle and and get a lot of this data. But now, over the last five, seven years, we're seeing a massive change that is happening where companies that need that data are relying more and more on the OEM provided data. Because our hardware is embedded in the vehicle. You cannot tamper with it, you cannot mess with it. It is connected to the vehicle. Even if the vehicle gets stolen, the first thing they do is throw the phone out or throw the dongle out. They cannot remove our hardware. So our data, as the OEM embedded data, as we call it, has become the sort of gold standard going forward. Uh okay, now going back to your point about data signals. So if you think about uh the CAN bus, which is the bus that connects all the electronics within a vehicle today, it carries about maybe over 15,000 data signals, okay, to to help the the various controllers within a vehicle uh deliver the kind of performance and experience that every OEM or manufacturer intends for its drivers to have, whether it's comfort, whether it's sound, whether whatever it may be. And so there are 15,000 plus signals that are available. The trick is which ones are valuable to the fleet owner. And over time, you know, as we learned, today we make available about 200 signals, which we categorize in six broad categories. You know, one is just basic vehicle health, the other is maintenance, the third is driving behavior, fourth is uh potentially the fuel and battery and propulsion systems, fifth is safety, you know. So so we have grouped signals in in logical groupings so that they can be consumed by the the fleet managers in in a structured manner. And uh it's it's a it's a growing uh sort of evolution of need, you know, as as they get visibility into certain aspects of the their vehicle, they need more. So now we are tapped into to to extract more signals from our CAN bus and make them available to the fleet operators and the fleet managers.

Aaron Powell That's really helpful. I mean, gosh, 15,000 and then 200, then six categories. I imagine there's a bit of dialogue between your team and your customers to say, well, which ones are the important ones? And kind of a nice uh back and forth in terms of identifying variables of interest. Is that correct, Eddie?

That that is so true. And and you know, I mean, while we call them customers, but they're truly our partners because they are also helping us guide up, guiding us as to what is important for the driver or the fleet owner. So it's not just that they're telling me as the data or software company of Stillantis, they're informing Stillantis through us what the future needs of the vehicles might be. So it's a it's it's extremely valuable input we get. So for example, you know, we we said uh they came to us and they said we need visibility. Uh just like Amazon, you know, you order something from Amazon today and you now have visibility of the entire journey your package is taking from Amazon, you know, all the way from when it is packed, wrapped, shipped, you know, given to the truck guy, all the way till it shows up at your door. And so people are used to that. And they say, well, we order vehicles, but we have no idea when the vehicle will show up. And uh so so that was like, okay, boom. You know, we as consumers, you know, can't wait for our package. And now, you know, you've ordered a $50,000, $100,000 vehicle and you're sitting and waiting in the blind, in the dark. So we we launched a new product called shipment tracking. And so the moment a vehicle leaves the factory floor, now the con the owner of that vehicle or the person who ordered that vehicle or the dealer has visibility, you know, where the vehicle is going. You know, a lot of times the vehicles don't get shipped directly to the to the end user. They go through upfit upfitment, you know, they become a snow truck or they become a you know, whatever use case that might be, and they go through upfitment, they go through various kinds of deliveries. Sometimes we have vehicles. Coming from overseas, so they are sitting on a ship, they're sitting in a yard, they're sitting in a rail yard. So now, you know, they can track the shipment. And we have found even by reducing shipping time by one day, you know, normally it takes let's say twenty days or whatever, if we can reduce it by one day, we reduce the total cost of ownership of that vehicle owner significantly. It makes a difference because they can put that vehicle into commercial production yes, sooner. So these are the kinds of things we learn every day from our customers.

It's almost like iron sharpening iron, right? Because, like you said, you get feedback, they're your partners, and it helps you and your team ideate on, oh, here's what else we can do, and kind of synthesize those uh ideas to create um productive solutions for everybody.

You know, one other good one that that we just put into production is, you know, these rental car companies, and these have you know massive fleets, million vehicles and so on and so forth. And you know, you used to in the past go to the airport, drop off your car, somebody will come with a little computer in their hands and check you out. It used to take five, ten minutes, and you would see a team of about 10 or 20 of these people checking out, you know, um customers. And you know, it causes delays because you're waiting for that guy to finish and then comes to you, and you know, your flight is leaving. So it used to create a lot of stress and a lot of manual labor. Now, with this telematics data, the moment you get to the the yard, the return, you know, lane, you can just leave your vehicle and go. Because we have captured through this telematics the last known, you know, location, the odometer, the fuel. We've captured all this information that the rental car company needs uh to build you. And so that feeds directly into their system. So it's a highly automated process now. And you you never miss your flight because you don't have to wait, you can be on your way. So, and they've reduced uh the amount of manual labor. They can redeploy that for cleaning cars or doing other things. So, yeah, there's some phenomenal uses of this data that uh we're seeing every day.

That that that yeah, and the end consumer like me, I've rented a car recently and and I have been sort of the uh the beneficiary of that um streamlined process. So that that's that's super exciting. I mean, are there other sort of aha's that you and your team have had in terms of like new solutions and new kind of um I guess uh things that you've been able to develop with your partners this way?

So, you know, uh I mentioned digital tolling. So, you know, there are companies that are now using our our data to do tolling. So you don't need to ever have a transponder or anything. They just work on your behalf in the background. Every time you cross a toll gantry, they pay the toll on your behalf and so on and so forth. So for large fleets that have thousands of vehicles, you know, this is a an awesome service that is now being made possible by our data. The but the one thing that really, really excites me, and I was gonna talk about that in the end, but I is the vehicle V2X communication. The vehicle talking to the infrastructure, vehicle talking to other vehicles, vehicle talking to pedestrians, vehicle talking to cyclists, motorcyclists, I mean, that whole infrastructure that is coming about is phenomenal from a safety standpoint, from a reduction in accidents and so on and so forth. I mean, last year alone we had over seven million traffic incidents in in the US, you know, over 40,000 deaths. How do we reduce that? You know, so so that is personally very exciting to me.

Uh like 20,000 a day, isn't it? Like seven seven million, gosh.

Yeah, there's a lot of accidents that happen. There's a ton of accidents that happen.

So so how does how does V2X work?

So V2X is is a way the vehicle communicates and lets the pedestrian know that I'm here. Or the pedestrian somehow communicates to the vehicle that I'm coming out of the left lane. So be careful when you take a left turn. You know, or you know how many times little bikers come out, or you know, kids bicycling comes come out of an alley, you know, and you you hit them, or the car driver doesn't realize that there is a biker. So all of this is now being automatically managed where the vehicles slow down. And like you see, even today, you know, when you try to go into the next lane, and if there's another car, the vehicle resists moving into the next lane. Or it gives you some kind of alert or an indication that, you know, there is another vehicle in your blind spot. So these are all the blind spots that cause accidents that are being covered by by this B2X communication.

That's fascinating. And like I think about I had a rental car recently, and just like you said, it the lane assist kind of kept me within the lane. I could even go a little bit hands-free and it would sort of just stay in the middle of the lane. And if I did sort of start to cross into another lane, it would give me a little resistance. But what I appreciated was it it allowed me to shift into a different lane if I needed to, or even halfway, because perhaps there's a tree branch or there's an emergency vehicle up ahead. And I think there has to be that sort of flexibility where, oh, maybe there is something that Mike really needs to avoid. So we will let him cross that dotted line, so to speak. So I think there's been a lot of um, so I certainly recognize that there's so many possibilities out there. Yeah.

And that's really exciting for us because we, you know, while we have to provide all of this data, we also get to co-innovate with with a number of very innovative companies by providing them their the this data that helps them design these applications for various kinds of safety needs or various kinds of other conveniences. Uh, you know, you go for lunch, for example, and you need to find a parking space that has the exact electric electric charger that your vehicle needs, the adapter, and it is available between the hours of 12 and 1, close to your wherever you're having lunch or dinner. So, you know, so these are highly, you know, so they need data from many, many sources to integrate and and give you one simple answer. And that makes your life a lot easier. So, you know, so these uh conveniences or safety, I mean, these are fascinating innovation opportunities that uh that we are uh dealing with every day.

Yeah, and I appreciate your sharing some of the uh successful examples, the innovative solutions. Tell me about some of the kind of hurdles or challenges that have come up and that your team has been able to solve, whether it's uh a difficult technological um problem that needed to be solved or something that just sort of came out as you're assessing something and working on a solution, maybe an unforeseen challenge that sort of emerged.

So, you know, all of this exciting stuff I talked about is made possible by having that connectivity to that vehicle. And, you know, so that connectivity to the vehicle is is the underlying sort of uh enabler for all of this fun stuff. Uh but you know, as I said, older vehicles are not connected. So, you know, so that creates a challenge for us. Um so that has been one of the biggest challenges has been the connectivity issue. And then, you know, as we all know, during COVID, there was a lot of electronic supply chain disruptions. And so vehicles were sent out, you know, in 2020, 2021, 2022, which had partial hardware or no hardware. And the customer is expecting to utilize digital services, but there is, you know, you can't do anything. So connectivity has been one of our biggest challenges. But I think now as the industry has realized the need and also supply chains have stabilized, you know, we're starting to see almost 100% connectivity across the board. But that used to be one of the biggest uh, you know, aha moments. The uh or the challenges. The other big challenge used to be in customer perception, you know, is big brother watching me. And so we had to spend a lot of time educating the the groups out there that we are entirely consent driven. And maybe other OEMs might not be as strict about consent. We at Stellantis Mobilicites are extremely rigid about we will not violate our consent policy. So we have to have two-step consent, explicit informed consent, uh consent that a person can b you know refute after some point of time or turn it up, turn it off. So so we are, you know, so that was another big uh sort of obstacle to to adoption. And you know, so we've seen some of those. We are working very hard on creating universal consent frameworks. We're making it easier for consumers to know where they've given consent and where they need to remove their consent, whatever. So that optionality is is extremely powerful and important for our our end users and drivers.

And I like to ask people about kind of the future of data. I mean, you mentioned Vita X, but are there other things that come to mind in terms of what might we expect in the near future?

So, you know, so video analytics is is another big area that is coming about where, you know, front dash camps, uh reverse dash camps, forward-facing cameras. I mean, you know, my my my Jeep has I don't I think 14 or 17 cameras already on it. And I can pretty much see every uh exterior spot of the of the vehicle. But uh but you know, internal facing dash camps are good for safety, they're also good for driver behavior monitoring, they're also good for uh on-the-fly coaching, for example. So a lot of that is is happening now and it's it's coming more and more. Uh obviously, data is gonna be the key enabler for autonomous driving, you know, hands-free driving. So there's various levels of autonomy that is coming about, uh, you know, so that is extremely important. Uh uh electric vehicles. You know, we we can take a your typical internal combustion engine vehicle to a mechanic, and a mechanic can tell you a lot about the state of health of that vehicle. They cannot today tell you the state of charge or state of health of the battery of an electric vehicle. And so the OE the world is relying on OEMs to to be able to communicate that, hey, you know, obviously over time the range degrades, whether it's your your smartphone or your vehicle or your computer, it's the same. But, you know, how do you uh put a you know, range anxiety is a big thing. How do you alleviate those concerns? So data is being used in in really, really interesting ways to uh to um enable some of these these conveniences and questions that people are asking. Another one that is under pilot testing, which is uh also related to battery vehicles, is you know, when we buy fuel or gas for our normal vehicles or in ice vehicles, you know, we pay a fuel tax that is used to support the infrastructure, you know, the roads and highways and so on and so forth. With battery electric vehicles, there is no fuel. There is no so a a new set of uh pilots is be uh are being done right now by the states of Minnesota, Portland, you know, all almost all of them called road usage charging, whereby, you know, the amount of battery vehicle you drive on a road, you will get a bill at the end of the month saying, hey, you drove 58 miles, and here's like 58 miles times X cents per dollar per mile. And you know, so that becomes your new way of tolling that the the government is experimenting with. So there's many uses of this data that are out there.

Oh, that's really exciting. And if I can touch back on one thing you talked about, it was the automatic tolling, particularly for fleets. And I think about Easy Pass. I mentioned having a rental car, and it's like if I go, say, to Florida for vacation, it's that, okay, how many times will I drive on the toll way? Should I bring my own Easy Pass? Should I pay the flat fee per day? Can you tell me a little bit more about how that works? So it's location based, and if the fleet operator signs up his or her vehicles with the local Easy Pass or tolling authority, they can just have that done automatically?

Yes. So we in fact just announced, Atlantis just announced his service uh this week with uh with uh one of our service providers to offer digital tolling in our not only fleet vehicles but passenger vehicles as well. But it's it's very easy. How many times you've forgotten to bring your you know easy pass when you've rented a car and suddenly you get a bill, you know, where the tolls were seven dollars, but the admin charges were forty dollars to to administer that toll. Um so none of this, you know, easy passes also have a tendency of getting stolen, you know, so uh so you know or broken, you know, it's just another piece of hardware. So all of those things, so the toll recovery, it's in the best interest of the toll uh sort of agency as well as the vehicle owner to have a a sort of unbreakable link. And through this digital tolling, they have this link because the vehicle's geolocation is known at all points of time, and we also know where the geolocation of the toll gantries. And so we know when a vehicle crosses a toll gantry location, and we also know the toll charges, you know, is forty cents or seventy-five cents or a hundred, you know, whatever, we are able to then trigger a payment mechanism with these tolling companies that are our partners now. They just directly bill at the end of the month the fleet owner. So you never miss a toll. The government gets its toll, the tolling agency, you know, gets its toll, the you know, the the fleet owner never gets fined for missing a toll. So, and you know, it's not the responsibility of the driver anymore to make sure that the you know easy pass is working or not working.

It's oh that's fantastic. Talk about frictionless. I mean, I love it. And if I can ask one more other question, is um in terms of, shall we say, receptivity. So I'm a driver for a fleet. I'm receiving feedback on my driving and ways to improve. I can imagine there's going to be a little bit of resistance at first, but are you seeing that um from your partners that their drivers are actually receptive and they're appreciating this the insights into becoming safer drivers?

You know, so I think it is how the fleet companies are presenting that information to their drivers. You know, you can come across as a big brother, or you can come across as a supportive aid, you know, in helping somebody get home safe, you know, on a daily basis. And, you know, these uh drivers are on the road for thousands of miles a month, and you know, so getting home safe is extremely important. Um so there are, you know, ways of providing this coaching, and you know, companies are also using rewards, gamification. You know, there's many, many interesting ways they're trying to deliver this message of safety uh to their drivers. And drivers are, you know, overall becoming more and more receptive, you know, as they realize. And plus, you know, the cars are getting smarter. So, you know, with the autonomous driving and so on and so forth. So, you know, the drivers can and take advantage of the features that the vehicles are offering today, you know, lane assist or blind spot, you know, all of those kinds of things. So, you know, I think overall there's a growing awareness and growing receptivity. Um, but yeah, we have long ways to go there.

Eddie, it's been so much I've enjoyed our conversation so much. I feel like we've covered so much material. I've learned so much about the new and growing trends, how data is being used across the spaces you highlighted. Is there anything that I've missed? Is there anything that you'd like to kind of highlight that we haven't touched on already?

I think uh, you know, it'll take us many, many more days to to figure all of those things out. But no, really, I think the the traffic safety, congestion reduction, you know, these are things that we kind of have taken for granted. And we need to really start doing something about it, because these can be huge improvements um in in uh how we live our daily lives. But I think the the big thing we should talk about next time around is autonomy, autonomous driving, where the vehicles, you know, one can envision a future where the vehicles own themselves and they just come and service you and take you to your office or drop your kids at school or do whatever. And then they go home and get charged and they use cryptocurrency to to bill you. So all of this will be data driven, data enabled, data powered. So uh there's a whole new world out there that is coming to us sooner than than than we expect.

The future is now. Yes, the future is now, for sure. Well, I would look very much look forward to another conversation. But before we end today's conversation, I would just want to have a couple of fun, fun questions, if you don't mind. Um, are there any particular favorite vacation spots you and your family enjoy going to? Are there particular favorite foods you've had along the way on a business trip or on personal travel?

So I I I I have to tell you this. I am going to Antarctica at the end of this year, uh, around Christmas with my whole family. And I'm very, very excited. It's the seventh continent. Not too many people have done it or do it, but we are so looking forward to. I I guess I'm a travel nerd and and the same uh sort of genes have flown into my children as well. And uh we have a rule in our family. For every year you age, you should have seen one new country.

Uh-huh.

So my my children, my son is 32, he's been to 45 countries, and my daughter, who's uh gonna turn 30, she's been to, I think, 42 countries. I myself have only been to 35 countries because I started the rule a little later. But but yeah. So we we're only 35, so we we are very excited. But uh, you know, from a business, yeah. I mean, and my favorite, you know, of all places, Japan is one of my favorite countries from the food standpoint. I'm a little bit of a foodie as well, as well as just the culture and and you know, the people are are fantastic.

Terrific. Thank you for sharing that. How long will the trip to Antarctica be? Is that like a is that like a month-long expedition?

No, no, no, no. We are not going on an expedition of that type. It'll be about uh two weeks.

And if you don't mind, have you ever seen the speed round questions where I give you two choices and you just answer very quickly? Well, I'll try. Okay, let's give it a try here. So speed round with Eddie, chocolate or vanilla?

Chocolate. Every single Day.

Tennis or pickleball. Pickleball. Convertible or SUV? Convertible. Hula hoop or yo-yo. Yo-yo. World series or super bowl? Superbowl. K pop or tailor swift?

Oh, that's a tough one. I go with Taylor Swift.

Alright, and I think I know the answer to this one, but Hawaii or Alaska.

Oh god. Hawaii. Hawaii. Hawaii. I'm already going to Antarctica, so I'm good with that.

Two more skiing or snowboarding? Snowboarding. And the last one, run DMC or Drake. Oh, Drake. All right. Well, thank you for completing Speed Round. Eddie, I've enjoyed this so much. Thank you so much for this great conversation. And I wish you and your family the best for not only a wonderful trip, but an upcoming wonderful Thanksgiving.

Thank you so much, Mike.

So thank you to all of our listeners and thank you to Eddie for joining us. So until the next time, we look forward to seeing you on another episode of Indicators. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Auto Care on Air. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast so that you never miss an episode. Don't forget to leave us a rating and review. It helps others discover our show. Autocare on Air is proud to be a production of the Autocare Association, dedicated to advancing the autocare industry and supporting professionals like you. To learn more about the association and its initiatives, visit autocare.org.