GM and Motorq Streamline Fleet Vehicle Logistics During COVID-19, Unlock New Approach for Fleet Management

Motorq, the connected car API company and General Motors innovated a new approach to streamline the delivery of Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac vehicles to fleet owners and operators during supply chain disruptions caused by COVID-19. For the first time, the companies integrated GM’s OnStar^TM Pre-Delivery data service, with Motorq’s cloud-based platform to allow fleet managers to accurately identify and track the location of vehicles throughout the logistics lifecycle. What began as a short-term fix is now becoming a new standard for fleet management.

Pre-delivery fleet tracking has always presented challenges as automotive manufacturers move hundreds of thousands of vehicles from factories, to staging lots, on trailers, to dealers and ultimately to the customer. Work and travel restrictions stemming from Covid-19 made this process even more difficult, as factories were idled, inventory movements were limited and dealership personnel were sporadically available. It was hard for fleet owners to obtain timely, accurate information about the status of their orders.

GM and Motorq are working to solve this problem by leveraging the embedded telematics data services from OnStar^TM to track and display vehicle location via a private, secure web-based portal. Upon receiving consent, Motorq’s cloud-based platform “ingests” vehicle data (like VIN, location, status, etc.) in real-time and presents it to fleet managers in the portal. With this new service, fleet managers for the first time can see the status and location of all tracked vehicles at any given moment. In addition to the live feed, fleet managers can also receive a daily status report delivered via email.

“It is said that ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ and COVID-19 certainly created the need for a new approach for tracking fleet vehicles,” said Arun Rajagopalan, co-founder and CEO of Motorq. “The benefits of this new approach have been embraced by fleet managers and we believe this can become the new industry standard for pre-delivery vehicle intelligence and management.”

“We saw a huge opportunity to leverage the power of OnStar for an entirely new use case – helping fleet customers better track the location and status of their vehicles, many of which were mission-critical for the response to COVID-19,” said Ed Peper, U.S. Vice President at General Motors Fleet. “Our collaboration with Motorq enabled us to quickly solve a short-term problem and create a new long-term opportunity for our customers as well.”