A smartphone application from Ottawa tech company Mobile Dealer aims to help dealers build customer loyalty in an increasingly competitive world.
“We just wanted to have a better way for dealerships to drive profitability and sustainable growth,” said CEO Tony della Busa.
Dealership customers download the app to receive service reminders, special offers and other personalized messages. The app also employs “geo-fencing” to send promotions to customers as they pass by the lot, and can even alert the dealership when customers are shopping at other lots so sales staff can send out counteroffers.
Della Busa said “several hundred” dealerships in North America and elsewhere have signed up for the application since its release in October 2017. He said it’s the only such product to allow dealers to make real-time updates, and is priced at $340 per dealership.
MOJIO’S UPDATES ADDRESS CRASHES
Vancouver-based Mojio and Germany-based electronics giant Bosch are adding crash detection and emergency response to Mojio’s suite of connected-car services for wireless providers.
The product, the first under the companies’ June 2018 investment and innovation agreement, can sense a collision,assess crash severity and initiate the appropriate response via an emergency call. It can also notify designated family or friends via text message or Mojio’s application.
Mojio’s existing white-label application uses a device plugged into a vehicle’s onboard-diagnostics (OBD) port to provide services such as Wi-Fi connectivity, notification about engine faults, recalls and summoning roadside assistance via Mojio’s cloud platform. It’s used in almost a million European and North American vehicles through DeutscheTelekom,T-MobileUSand Telus in Canada.
The retrofitted technology,scheduled for midyear deployment, can be used at a cost of about US $10 a month in any vehicle.
QUEBEC AV COMPANY INKS CHINA DEAL
Leddartech says its technology will now be available in Apollo, an autonomous-drive open platform created by China-based technology company Baidu. The latest version of Baidu’s platform, Apollo 3.5, will feature LeddarTech’s LiDAR products through an open-source software-development kit. LiDAR — light detection and ranging — can be used to create digital 3-D maps of an environment in autonomous-driving applications, the company said. LeddarTech’s LiDAR platform gives users the ability to develop custom LiDAR applications based on their autonomous-driving technology needs, the company said.
Baidu’s Apollo partners include autonomous-delivery-van builder Udelv, which recently began testing grocery-delivery services forWalmart in the United States.InNovember,Baidu announced Volvo and Ford began developing autonomous-vehicle technology using the Apollo platform.
