Today’s New York Times has an Op-ed piece by Robin Chase, the founder and former chief executive of Zipcar.  Mr. Chase puts forth the proposition that a simple solution to getting out ahead of potential safety issues such as the current Toyota accelerator problem is real-time access to vehicles’ “black boxes” via wireless applications.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article entitled “Heists Targeting Truckers On Rise”. The story outlines the increase in trucking freight theft since the current recession started.

Despite the ecological value of incentivizing the swapping of low mileage cars for higher mileage cars, there has been some questions over the economic value of the Cash for Clunkers program. Many are wondering if the program only served to pull forward manufacturing demand that would have soon developed anyway.

 Having just gotten settled from my return from the 2009 Telematics Detroit event, I have some observations: 

Yesterday’s NY Times’ Green Inc.

GPS and mobile communications are essential capabilities of any telematics solution.  For a couple of years now, the manufacturers of wireless modules have been offering converged GSM/GPS modules.  They have had trouble maintaining margins on the price of the converged package because everyone in the industry has knowledge of the market prices for the individual components and the wireless module companies have done a poor job of communicating any increased value that is provided by the converged offering.

 As I have been saying for some time now, the global economic crisis could very well be a good, albeit tumultuous, period for the telematics and broader M2M space.  Telematics and M2M are all about efficiency and productivity.  Efficiency and productivity increases are exactly what are needed by industry and enterprises to help them maintain profitability and survive during these times of shrinking economic activity and potential deflation.  

Last week I attended the latest meeting of the Payment Assurance Technology Association’s board of directors that was held in conjunction with the National Automobile Dealers As

The January 3rd edition of The New York Times had an opinion piece written by a Computer Science professor and a Product Manager from Google.  They suggest four ways that technology can help Detroit to save itself.  At least three of these ideas could be considered telematics or an extension of telematics related technology and are not new ideas to those of us in the telematics industry.  I have two reactions to stories such as these:

Here is a story from December 31st’s NY Post.  

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12312008/news/regionalnews/queens/onstar_her...