Ford accelerates fleet data capability with Pro AI

The Ford Motor Company has launched an intelligent fleet assistant for commercial customers, offering “a deep intelligence that understands specific fleet vehicles inside and out”. 

According to the company, the Ford Pro AI is designed to act as a trusted assistant at work that organisations can depend on to help manage their fleet operations more effectively and get daily tasks done. It aims to simplify fleet management by turning responsibilities into tasks that can be completed in minutes. The intelligent fleet assistant takes the millions of data points that vehicles generate — such as seatbelt clicks to vehicle health signals — and turns them into insights that can be acted on.

Before it made the launch, Ford surveyed fleet managers to understand how much time they spend on specific job duties. The results showed that fleet managers spent more than 23 hours a week on average on juggling routine tasks, ranging from scheduling service to managing drivers and tracking costs. The sample also said that they thought AI could help them reduce the time spent on daily tasks by an average of 40% or more each week.

The multi-agent architecture is built on “clean, well-structured internal data sources” from each customer’s fleet to reduce the potential of AI hallucinations and errors.

As it made the launch, Ford said that its new product was not just a generic chatbot. “We know there’s a lot of AI buzz floating around,” it said. “Interestingly, the commercial space is seeing AI more and more as a core operational tool versus an add-on, driven by urgency for organisations to lower costs, boost efficiency and improve safety.”

The new product is powered by the proprietary Ford Pro Telematics Software to provide deeper detail and accuracy about vehicle health versus surface-level information and diagnostics trouble codes (DTC codes). 

Noting that human-in-the-loop was critical to providing oversight, feedback and making decisions without disrupting the business day, Ford Pro AI is said to be designed to handle administrative burdens so fleet managers can focus on high-value operational gains.

For example, if asked the question, “What vehicles need service this month?”, Ford Pro AI would respond with a list of vehicles in a fleet that need service based on their vehicle health data. Users could then dive deeper into a specific vehicle’s diagnostics and get quick recommendations that can help them to prioritise which vehicles to service first, thus preventing unwanted downtime.

After this, a user could navigate to the service scheduling feature in the Ford Pro Telematics Software to book a maintenance or repair appointment at one of more than 760 Ford Pro Commercial Vehicle Centres or have the service come to them with one of Ford Pro’s Mobile Service Vans.

Looking at another intended use case to solve a real-life problem, Ford said that its survey showed fleet managers spending an average of over two hours per week on tracking costs. To cut this down – for example, in managing 150 last-mile delivery vehicles – Ford said Pro AI could help to do that more quickly.

The solution is said to be able to analyse vehicle and fuel utilisation, idle times, speeding and acceleration events across the fleet to help fleet managers identify issues. As a result, managers get a get a list of recommendations to reduce fuel costs based on a fleet’s unique utilisation.

The solution is available immediately at no additional cost to subscribers of the Ford Pro Telematics Software.