Automotive News Canada - August 2019 - v2 - 16

* AUGUST 2019

A native son on the rise at Nissan
CHOSEN BECAUSE:
In May, Steve Milette took
over from Joni Paiva as president of Nissan Canada, the first
Canadian to lead the automaker in this country. Milette, 46,
formerly Nissan Canada's sales
chief, has more than 20 years
of automotive experience.
He promises stability for the
automaker moving forward,
following six consecutive years
of growth in new-vehicle sales
that peaked in 2018. As a result,
Milette sees little reason to

STEVE
MILETTE
President, Nissan Canada
shake things up.
Still, despite a decline in
sales so far this year, Milette
says Nissan looks to increase
market share by increasing
retail volume in its dealership
network. Nissan Canada, he
said, wants "pure growth in
the right areas."

www

IN HIS OWN WORDS:

"When you've got 20-plus years
in the industry and you've sort of
prepared for this all your life, it's
an honour when you do get there.
It really was an honour when Joni
shared the vision and the news
with me. When you understand the
other people within the company
or elsewhere within Nissan, there's
a lot of great talent. ... It's really
humbling to be in that lineage,
if you will."

Using his street
smarts for
smarter streets

Making a degree
of difference as
an auto educator
CHOSEN BECAUSE:
Since 2018, Jason Dale has been executive director of the Automotive Business
School of Canada at Barrie College,
which offers two-year diplomas and fouryear degrees in automotive business and
a one-year certification in dealership management.
Dale, 47, leads
the Ontario school
- 110 kilometres
north of Toronto
- at a critical
Executive director,
Automotive Business time for the industry. Automakers
School of Canada
are scrambling
to adjust to
emerging tech
trends, while dealerships face a critical skilled-labour shortage alongside a
need to adapt to online retail. The graduates who leave the ABSC program will
be poised to play an integral role as the
industry adapts.
Under Dale, the ABSC looks to
expand its reach. The school is developing an aftermarket-executive-management program, Dale said, while efforts
are under way to expand the student
population's geographic representation.
About 90 per cent of ABSC students
come from Ontario and nine per cent
from Quebec.

CHOSEN BECAUSE:

JASON
DALE

www

IN HIS OWN WORDS:

"We're trying to capture those students from the rest of the provinces.
We're the only automotive business
degree in Canada, so we're trying to get
more awareness out there. Somebody
told me when I first started here that
the Automotive Business School of
Canada was the best-kept secret. I don't
want it to be the best-kept secret."

SHAILEN
BHATT

From left, Jason Williamson,
Bingxu Hu and Rebecca Brown
PHOTO: UNIVERSITY
O F WAT E R L O O / J O E P E T R I K

REBECCA BROWN, BINGXU HU
and
JASON
WILLIAMSON
Graduating computer science students and founders of CircleChek

Students' app eliminates
paperwork, and paper
CHOSEN BECAUSE:
Three fourth-year computer-science students at Ontario's University
of Waterloo - Jason Williamson, 39; Bingxu Hu, 23; and Rebecca
Brown, 23 - teamed up to solve a nagging and costly paperwork problem for companies that maintain fleets of trucks and heavy equipment.
Their new CircleChek software, in beta testing, digitizes pen-and-paper daily inspections while also complying with provincial transportation and labour standards. Operators input the data using a smartphone app, enabling managers to have on-the-fly access to inspections,
analytics and custom checklists. Bingxu says CircleChek is also suited
to dealerships and repair shops, allowing customers to upload data and
receive diagnostics and repair estimates online. Manufacturers might
also find uses for the software, he said. The nascent company operates
from the Velocity Garage in Kitchener, Ont., an incubator for startup
companies.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS:

The 43-year-old native of Stratford,
Ont., now based in Washington, D.C., is
helping lead intelligent mobility, putting
vehicles on the road that "talk" to each
other, to traffic signs and to pedestrians
to increase safety. So-called vehicle-to-everything or
V2X technology could reduce
crashes -
which claim
40,000 lives
a year in the
United States - President, Intelligent
Transportation Society
increase mobility and move
of America (ITS America)
society toward
a more sustainable transportation system.
Shailen Bhatt, previously executive
director of the Colorado Department of
Transportation, says connectivity could
soon provide relief for commuters, who
could see the amount of time stuck in
traffic cut by an average of nearly 100
hours a year.
His organization, the Intelligent
Transportation Society of America,
works with automakers on connectivity and on learning how road infrastructure needs to be updated to work best
with next-generation autonomous vehicles. Ford, Toyota and General Motors all
have members on the ITS America board.

www

IN HIS OWN WORDS:

"One of the most dangerous things
you do each day is get in your car and
drive. We are very close to a world in
which cars don't crash, or at least not
at the rate that they do right now."

www

BINGXU HU: "We really wanted to build a tool that users actually want to
use - something that's user-friendly. We want to look into how we can
automate the whole process."
JASON WILLIAMSON: "Everybody's carrying smartphones these days. If
they can just jump on them and enter the data, then we removed a
pain point."
REBECCA BROWN: "It would not be difficult to extend [CircleChek's]
capabilities to truck or van fleets."

PHOTO SUPPLIED
BY ITSAMERICA

Automotive News Canada - August 2019 - v2

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive News Canada - August 2019 - v2