Monitoring vehicle activity and communicating insights from vehicles at an automobile dealership

Abstract

An apparatus for managing information regarding an inventory of vehicles on an automobile dealership lot includes vehicle tracking devices installed in the vehicles. The tracking devices utilize a GPS receiver for generating vehicle location data and an accelerometer for generating vehicle motion data. Data from the vehicle tracking devices are received by a central server that uses the data to determine whether a vehicle is on a test drive, the identity of a salesperson who is with the vehicle, and the estimated time that the vehicle will return to the dealership. Preferred embodiments establish a geofence around the dealership location, detect when vehicles exit and reenter the geofence, and communicate the exit/return events back to the central server. The central server communicates the information to smartphones of dealership personnel to indicate availability of a particular vehicle. Some embodiments also aggregate the information from multiple sensors to report on key metrics for optimizing dealer sales performance.