Inrix to Provide Dynamic Fuel Price Data

In an interesting move Inrix, the traffic provider of live TMC traffic feeds (collected from their Dust Network of fleet vehicles) is leveraging their truck fleet relationship to provide dynamic fuel prices to fleet providers, while also offering it as a service to other GPS manufacturers. The need for understanding up to date fuel pricing is an obvious need for fleet vehicles and with the average American 2-driver household spending $4,132 a year on gas, there could be some opportunity for savings at home too. It's not clear if GPS manufacturers will adopt this feature offered by Inrix, but it seems like a no brainer to me. Come on, if you could bring up a Fuel Station Point of Interest list for a 5 mile radius around you and see current fuel prices there too, wouldn't you want that ability? I think that the move signals the start of more data feeds to the GPS; with its role as "drive manager" expanding from simple navigation to a bigger away from home information manager. I could see this as a quick rollout for TomTom within their TomTom PLUS framework. But hey, who knows....
Press Release Follows after the jump...
Inrix, the leader in traffic data services, today announced the availability of Inrix Dynamic Fuel Prices, a new offering that features enhanced point of interest (POI) data for 140,000 gas stations and dynamic fuel price data for 100,000 stations in the U.S.. Inrix is providing the service exclusively in partnership with Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), the world’s most comprehensive source for petroleum pricing and news information.
The new Inrix Dynamic Fuel Prices service easily integrates with navigation and local search solutions to provide consumers and businesses with fuel price data by station for gasoline and diesel. The service, which is updated on an hourly basis, also includes enhanced POI data about gas stations such as the location, phone and brand of the station.
“Our customers asked us to provide a single source for dynamic traffic and fuel price information,” said Kush Parikh, Vice President of Business Development at Inrix. “The potential for fuel price savings and routing efficiencies across both commercial and consumer markets is significant.”
The American Trucking Association estimates that trucking industry fuel costs will surpass $100 billion in 2006 – a nearly 50% increase in the last three years. In the consumer market, the average 2-driver household now spends $4,132 on gas annually compared to $2620 last year.
Inrix Dynamic Fuel Prices allows navigation and local search solution providers to display or route to gas stations of a specific brand or product offering, such as stations that carry only diesel fuel, or to find the most affordable gas of a specific grade in any given area. Fleet management service providers can enable their customers to schedule the most efficient fuel station stops along a specific long haul route or determine the most efficient route.