Nowadays, and I hope it is something more than a passing fact, the main point of support of the projects Pay As You Drive is the impact that they can have in the development of a more ecological use of the vehicle, although in fact there are many other costs generated by the traffic that should motivate a bigger political support to this type of projects.
In this context, the most outstanding news is the commitment with the development of the policies “Pay As You Drive” on the part of the Californian government. As it has happened in other occasions, this can have a great repercussion in the institutions of other North American and European states.
The interesting thing of this position is that it prohibits the use of the GPS and of information on the localization for these projects. Limiting their use to such applications as emergency road service, anti-theft, map service or travel assistance provided they are carried out by entities without spirit of lucre, such as clubs etc.
Since these services are not of constant use, the information of the localization shouldn’t be systematic and therefore it would not be appropriate to consider it inside a project Pay As You Drive.
This would support the decision taken by Progressive of replacing their project Autograph, which used a GPS, by the current MyRate that does it without this information and additionally they also eliminated the necessity of installation, which is one of the main sources of problems of these projects.
We don’t have information on their penetration in the market, but what we know is that in one year, their offer has extended to 14 states and that it is incorporating some more every month.
In Europe the thing is not so clear, basically all the projects incorporate GPS in the belief that the E-Call or E-Toll system will imply their obligatory use in the automobile and that “their readiness would justify the use of its information for the application PAYD.” This is a quite doubtful reasoning. In fact so much Progressive as Norwich, the pioneers in this system, reached the conclusion that the future didn’t go this way.
Continuing in Europe we have to stress the interest of the company leader in Spain Mapfre with their project Y-Car and the presentation of a new policy for motorcycles eBike10. This has motivated me to open a new blog in Spanish to speak with more detail of the Ibero-American projects.
And, of course, we also have to mention to AXA that has launched a project in France leaning on the technical support of Steria and in Italy, where AXA-Carlink has recovered the project Autometrica that was the first European PAYD project.
As always, I have upgraded my “
Pay As You Drive Directory ” and my News Bulletin.Yours sincerelly
Interim Management.
+ 34 649 49 17 70
+ 34 976 59 58 71
Email: s.minguijon@salvador-minguijon.es
Web: http://www.salvador-minguijon.es
