Motive debuts AI Coach to bring drivers a personalized and automatic coaching experience
AUSTIN, Texas—Everything is bigger in Texas. Perhaps that’s why Motive decided to hold its second-annual user conference here in Austin. The company announced new innovations and features to its platform, and one of the more interesting announcements to come from the conference has already been considered a major game-changer for some fleets.
Tuesday morning, Motive announced its new AI Coach feature. This feature gives fleet managers the ability to use an AI-generated avatar to personally coach drivers—with very little need for fleet manager input. The company demonstrated this feature by playing a video of an AI avatar coaching a driver.
What takes place in an AI Coaching session?
Here’s how the AI Coach approached the coaching session:
“Hi, Charlie. It's Tim Guy, the safety guy here. Let's go over your weekly recap. We'll highlight what you did well and go over a few areas to help you stay safe and efficient on the road. Charlie, your safety score decreased from 84 to 80. Let's highlight some behaviors that impacted your score. First, we'll cover an area for recognition: alert driving. Next, we'll cover areas for improvement: cell phone usage and vehicle idling.
“Charlie, here's a great example where you avoided a collision caused by another driver's unsafe lane change. Your quick reaction and awareness help prevent an accident. Awesome job staying sharp.”
Because the AI Coach is backed by Motive’s video and telematics data, the coach was able to play the footage of the driver’s “area of recognition,” avoiding a collision when another vehicle swerved into the driver’s lane.
Next the AI Coach displayed footage of areas where the driver could improve.
“Let's review an area for improvement. You had four instances of cell phone use this week. Even a quick glance can be dangerous, and distracted driving is a leading cause of accidents. Our organization defines cell phone use as handling a phone for five seconds while driving above 25 mph. If you ever need to take a call or check something urgent, the safest choice is to pull over.”
Again, because the AI Coach is backed by Motive’s wealth of data and video footage, the coaching session displayed specific instances where the driver used his cell phone while driving.
See also: What do you expect from telematics technology?
The AI Coach then moved to the next item on the agenda: idling.
“Charlie, you idled for over 15 minutes on Thursday in San Jose, despite not being in the vehicle and with mild weather. Minimizing idling in such conditions saves fuel and reduces emissions. Some states have anti-idling laws, and violations could result in fines for the company. As a reminder, it's best to turn off the engine when waiting for more than two minutes.”
This scenario also shows how integrated the AI Coach is with the Motive platform. In just one sentence, the AI Coach indicated where the driver was, how long he idled, and reported that weather conditions were mild—all supporting the case that idling in this scenario was likely unnecessary, which prompted the coaching.
Finally, AI Coach provides a summary of the coaching session.
“Here are some key takeaways: First, great job staying alert and being aware of your surroundings. Next, avoid phone use, and take a break when necessary. Lastly, reduce vehicle idling whenever possible to improve fuel efficiency. Charlie, I appreciate your commitment to safety and fuel efficiency, and know you'll continue making great decisions on the road. Let's keep up the progress and have a fantastic week.”
These coaching sessions happen with little interaction from the fleet manager. Shoaib Makani, Motive’s CEO and co-founder, said the platform automatically selects driving behaviors that have the most impact on a driver’s score, to allow fleet leaders to focus on other tasks.
What do fleet leaders think about AI Coach?
Within just a few hours of AI Coach’s launch, Nihar Gupta, Motive’s senior director of product management, said fleets were already chomping at the bit to implement it into their operations.
“We're seeing a lot of interest from fleets, actually,” Gupta said. “I'm shocked at how many people are just like, ‘This is amazing!’ … because I wasn't sure how many fleets would be ready for it.”
FleetOwner spoke with one Motive customer to get his impressions of AI Coach. Dwayne Morrison is the safety and compliance manager for Southwind, the parent company of home services brands such as 1-800-Got Junk and others. While he hadn’t seen AI Coach until Motive’s keynote on Tuesday, he said he’s ready to use the AI Coach in his fleet immediately.
“I’m very excited about [AI Coach],” Morrison told FleetOwner. “You need to meet people where they are. Having [the message] targeted and understanding of what it is specifically that [drivers] are doing while coaching both the good behaviors and opportunities to improve— To do that systematically across the entire fleet is incredible.”
Tim Guy, VP of safety at RoadSafe, shared a similar sentiment.
“At RoadSafe, I'm responsible for 60-plus locations; for me to have that type of training and get this type of effective coaching, it would take years to do that,” he said. “With this technology that Motive has, we can snap our fingers and have it done instantly. That's a game-changer for me. I can't wait to get my hands on that.”
Gupta is also finding interest from fleets of all stages of their safety culture journey.
“It's not just the really advanced [fleets] that are ready to consume it,” he said. “It's also ones that are earlier in their journey, that maybe just got dash cams recently, they don't have mature coaching programs, and they're like, ‘This is a great way for me to hit the easy button and just let the system do it.”
What’s to come with Motive AI Coach?
While the Motive dashboard has several avatars fleet managers can choose from to help coach their drivers, the platform will allow fleet managers to record themselves as coaching avatars (coming at the end of Q2 2025).
What’s more, the avatar used in the demonstration video was a real person, Tim Guy, mentioned above, who Motive brought onstage at the keynote after the AI Coach session was shown to the audience. Guy offered his first impressions of his AI Coach avatar in front of the crowd.
“It's unreal,” Guy said. “The fact that it sounds like me, it feels like me, it looks like me—that is unbelievable!”
The process for fleets to create their own avatar is relatively simple, Gupta told FleetOwner. Basically, you just talk in front of a camera—and you can talk about whatever you want.
“It doesn't matter what the topic is,” Gupta explained. “The point is how you come across, how you communicate, your cadence, your voice, your motions. All of that gets inputted, and that's what builds the avatar.”
Guy shared his experience: “The fact that I looked into a smartphone and just had a conversation about my hobbies, and it turned into that—that is unbelievable,” Guy said after seeing himself in avatar form during the keynote.
Further, Gupta said that, while currently the AI Coach uses driver-specific data in a scripted way—which ensures consistent coaching across the fleet—eventually, the AI Coach could become even more customizable.
“Maybe your drivers respond better to a stricter, authoritarian figure,” Gupta said. “You can evolve the script to fit a different voice. Or if you wanted to take a softer tone, you can do that, as well. I think those are the types of things that we can do in the future.”
Motive AI Coach will be available to all Motive customers by the end of this quarter.
