RAC renews telematics contract with Euro Car Parts for fleet of 3,000-plus vehicles

The RAC and Euro Car Parts have signed another three-year contract to provide the car parts distributor with a telematics and driving monitoring service for its entire fleet of more than 3,000 vehicles.

The two companies began working together in 2015 with the RAC fitting telematics black boxes to 2,500 parts vans. The new contract takes in a further 650-plus vehicles following Euro Car Parts’ acquisition of parts supplier Andrew Page in 2017, in addition to being enhanced with the RAC’s integrated dash cam service.

By combining dash cams with the RAC’s patented telematics accident detection capability, which can detect lower impact collisions due to industry-leading vibration-sensing technology being used in conjunction with the more common g-force-only method, Euro Car Parts will benefit from greater insight into any incident that occurs.

The RAC has also provided Euro Car Parts with Bluetooth-enabled individual driver ID fobs which are automatically paired to every telematics box informing fleet managers with driver-centric insight rather than just vehicle insight, as frequently vehicles are used by multiple drivers every day.

The RAC MyDrive fobs also feature a ‘notify’ button which companies can choose to use in a variety of different ways. Euro Car Parts has chosen to use the button to save the business time: drivers press the ‘notify’ button to let the depot know they are on the way back for re-stocking.

Head of RAC Connected Services Yioti Smith said:

“After three years of working closely together on reporting and improving driver behaviour we are very pleased to have now taken this to another level. Under the terms of our new contract with Euro Car Parts we will be introducing our integrated dash cams into every one of their parts distribution vehicles which work seamlessly with the existing telematics technology.

“By layering additional technology like the RAC MyDrive ID fobs, we have been able to take monitoring from being purely vehicle-based to being driver-specific while also introducing a new time-saving business benefit via the ‘notify’ functionality which effectively speeds up the re-stocking of each van.

“Our work with Euro Car Parts also serves to demonstrate how our telematics technology is continuing to go from strength to strength and how it remains a key component of the RAC’s already sizeable and rapidly growing connected vehicle predictive breakdown service, both in consumer and business-to-business markets.”

Tony Shearer, Branch Operations Director of Euro Car Parts, said:

“In the first three years of using the RAC’s telematics technology we saw some very clear fleet management benefits so we are excited to extend the service to the Andrew Page fleet, and to enhance with the integration of dash cams.

“We have been very impressed at how the RAC team has been able to adapt its telematics service to suit our needs and enhance our operation.”

The RAC and Euro Car Parts have a long history of working together over parts supply to the RAC’s fleet of 1,600 patrols.