General Motors has filed to trademark Future Roads, GM Authority has uncovered. The filing will be used for a new data platform project designed to deliver critical insights to government agencies.
Filed on October 5th, 2021 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the application is assigned serial number 97060488. Under the Goods and Services category, the application lists “Telematics services, namely, providing online non-downloadable software for receiving data analytics relating to vehicles and vehicle interactions with roadways.”
As GM Authority covered previously, General Motors announced the new Future Roads project during the recent GM Investor Day event, during which GM’s vice president of Global Innovation, Pam Fletcher, discussed the new digital platform.
At its core, Future Roads will gather anonymized vehicle data to provide various government agencies with “actionable insights” to implement improvements and create safer, better-maintained roads.
Notably, Fletcher added during her presentation that the Future Roads project may be given a new name in the future.
The Future Roads project is already undergoing a paid pilot, looking at things like seatbelt usage, risk scoring, and crash hotspots. Following the pilot, the platform will get an official launch and be brought to scale, with additional Future Roads products expected for release sometime next year. Some of these products may include things like pothole locations, road roughness, and road weather reporting.
According to Fletcher, the Future Roads platform will realize significant cost savings for customers, as “their failure to spend $1 in road repair today creates a $7 cost later,” per her presentation during the GM Investor Day event.
General Motors is ramping up a variety of new digital businesses and services set to launch in the next several years. As GM Authority covered previously, GM filed to trademark DealerSource back in July, possibly preceding the launch of a new online auction service which enables General Motors dealerships to bid on and purchase off-lease GM vehicles, plus serving as a management system for end-of-lease vehicles.
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Comments
Total nonsense. This is the first step in monitoring miles driven for tax purposes. Who now controls GM?
I agree that’s total nonsense
Do you not think that everyone with a recently built car is not being tracked?
Make Orwell fiction again.
Outstanding idea! The more technology-driven products GM can come up with the safer our roads will be. Keep going!
Amazing. The word safety is within the article so some believe it’s all about safety. I’m not surprised the article didn’t contain the phrase “it’s for our children’s” safety. You only need to read the latest “Infrastructure Bill” to ascertain what it’s all about. States have been granted the authority to assess taxes based on miles traveled. The article fails to mention these “data analytics” will provide subscribers (state tax authorities) the means to track everyone’s miles traveled. This is not conspiracy theory. Proposed legislation has already been written to exempt EVs. And just “coincidentally” GM is moving to an all EV lineup. It’s not about potholes folks; it’s all about taking from your pot. Do some research and see who really owns GM!
If you use the roads, then pay for them. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. If EV’s are exempt, then bravo. They should be.
The government and GM partnership will only help the environment and society in the long run. If we do not become more serious our dependence on fossil fuels, which are neither sustainable nor safe, will never change. Mary Barra, Mark Reuss and Pam Fletcher are all headed in the correct direction. Bravo GM!
Shut your mouth idiot!!!!!
Apparently, there are those who are ignorant of the fact that every gallon of gas is already taxed by the states and the feds and use it to sustain our roadways. And the states tax a third time via annual license plate fees. And some states place a 4th annual tax on EVs because they don’t pay enough for gas. In Illinois the annual license plate fee for an EV is $1200+ vs $125 for ICEs.
You can’t justify anything in Il. this state is run by a bunch of Burn-out-lightbulb. You can only l@@k at Chicago.. Then the Gov. put $50 million into a equal taxes and his brother dumped even more to leave it as is.. Remember how they taxed the river tubes on the river. So don’t go by just Il. they think they live in CA.