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Source: Bosch announcement
STUTTGART, Germany – People who use shared vehicles expect their car to be roadworthy, and not to smell of smoke. It is more than annoying when a vehicle is scratched and dented or someone has smoked in it. Thanks to the new Ridecare solutions Bosch is developing for fleet operators and mobility service providers, this will soon be a thing of the past.
The aim is an even safer and more pleasant ride for every user. The first standard Ridecare feature is smoke and damage detection. For this, Bosch combines a sensor box in the vehicle with cloud-based data analysis using artificial intelligence.
This allows sharing providers to receive important, easily understood information in real time on whether a vehicle has been damaged or someone has smoked in it. Repairs or cleaning can then be carried out more quickly and more in line with demand, optimizing fleet management.
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“In carsharing, one of the main keys to customer satisfaction is to ensure users have a safe and pleasant driving experience at all times. With its Ridecare solutions, Bosch is setting a new standard for an even better customer experience in the sharing market,” says Harald Kroeger, member of the board of management of Robert Bosch GmbH.
The supplier of technology and services is currently working on pilot projects with leading sharing providers in Asia, North America, and Germany with a view to launching a production version of its smoke and damage detection system. Bosch also recently received official approval for this system from TÜV Süd, including a confirmation of the reliability of these fleet services.
Ridecare creates transparency
Carsharing providers usually receive little if any information about whether their vehicles were damaged or smoked in during a given rental period. While users often report instances of major damage to the car, providers tend to be saddled with the cost of repairing supposedly minor damage.
Another source of great dissatisfaction among customers is taking possession of a vehicle in which the previous driver has surreptitiously been smoking. In such cases, the cost of professional interior cleaning can often run into several hundreds of euros.
With its Ridecare solutions, Bosch can now give carsharing providers clarity instead of conjecture: a sensor box in the vehicle detects both cigarette smoke in the interior and damage to the exterior. Detecting these types of damage with just a single sensor unit is a first in the industry.
The solutions available until now could detect either smoke or accidents, but not both.
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“Bosch’s combined smoke and damage detection system is the world’s first production solution that can reliably detect and incontrovertibly report both damage to and smoke inside the car,” Kroeger says. In addition, the box’s sensors are so precise that they can detect not only accidents, but even accidental damage while parking. This includes minor collisions involving a shared vehicle that is parked downtown and not currently rented out. As a result, sharing providers can directly determine who either caused the damage or smoked in the vehicle.
To view the entire announcement, click HERE.
