Fleet telematics is built on logging data from vehicles, such as travel miles and fuel usage. But increasingly camera-based information is being added to the mix, to enhance safety. With its new range of fleet dashcams, Motive has gone one step further. The secret ingredient? Built-in AI, which the company reckons will turn its new range of cameras into the hub of an automated fleet management ecosystem.
Motive’s AI Dashcam Plus
At its Vision 2026 conference, Motive launched its AI Dashcam Plus and AI Omnicam Plus. These cameras build in the capabilities of Motive’s telematics device alongside dashcam functions but also bump up the internal processing power via a Qualcomm Dragonwing processor.
Started in 2013 as KeepTruckin, Motive as a brand was born in 2022. “We’ve come a long way,” says Shoaib Makani, Founder and CEO, Motive. “The seed of the idea was we wanted to build modern technology for those who do physical work in the field and on the road, and so the first product was an app for drivers to do logs on their phone and manage their workflows. Then we built a fleet management solution for those who operate commercial vehicles, trucks, and equipment. We have since evolved into an integrated operations platform solving a wide range of problems. Today we serve 100,000 customers across the construction industry, energy, passenger transportation, public sector, public utilities.”
During this expansion process, there has been a push towards creating physical hardware. “For us it was out of necessity,” says Makani. “You can’t unlock the data that is necessary to deliver automation in our use case without having a physical device that brings the data online that connects the vehicles, equipment, and people in the field. We first started building our vehicle gateway telematics device in 2015. From there we then extended into non-vehicular assets.”
This provided safety features for equipment, but customers also wanted safety for their operators, which led to the first camera range in 2018. “We built a real depth and competency in hardware, including cameras,” says Makani. However, the launch of Motive’s AI Dashcam Plus and AI Omnicom Plus has taken its cameras into new territory. “This concept of a dashcam is not novel,” says Makani. “It’s been around for at least 15 years. The first generation provided exoneration in an accident. The next generation added AI to detect and prevent unsafe behavior, monitor the driver, and alert them. Now we’re at the third generation, which is not just about alerting, but intervention, so more sensors, more compute, and more cameras.”
One of Motive’s innovations with its AI Dashcam Plus is two front-facing cameras instead of one. The first is a typical wide angle to catch as much of the surrounding visual environment as possible. The second is a narrower view offering more detail, such as number plates and the faces of occupants in vehicles. “This allows more visibility,” says Makani. “We’re the first in the industry to take this approach of dual forward facing cameras, and it’s because you get more information to make judgments, and to then inform your AI models, which then allows us to have more predictive intervention, earlier alerts, more reliable alerts, and that means collisions prevented and lives saved. We’re setting what we think is a new standard.”
Motive AI In Practice
During a driving demonstration with legendary female trucker Ingrid Brown, VP of Refrigerated Specialized Freight, Blackjack Express LLC, I was shown how alerts notified the driver verbally, although these could be visual via a screen too. Aside from anticipating the motion of external traffic, the system can also use a camera facing into the cab to provide notification if the driver’s seatbelt isn’t being worn, if they yawn, or mobile phone usage is detected.
Reception from Motive’s clients has been positive so far. “We were super excited to try our the advanced warning technology,” says Ryan Domengeaux, Chief Legal Officer, United Vision Logistics. “In the first week one of our drivers was notified of a stalled vehicle in the middle of the interstate, in the Houston area at night on a major interstate. He would not have seen the vehicle, beause it was a dark vehicle in the middle of night, and it literally saved lives. It’s an extra pair of eyes.”
United Vision Logistics has around 1,000 pieces of equipment and most of its miles are driven in Louisiana and Texas, which have a reputation for being litigious. The company focuses on the oil field services sector, which involves dangerous environments, including rural locations. Safety was the key feature United Vision Logistics was looking for, over ten years working with Motive.
“We turned on in-cab notifications for speeding, and within a matter of months saw 75 or 80% decrease in speeding incidents,” says Domengeaux. “This AI technology is a game changer. Where we used to spend a week or two crunching data manually to figure out who are the top 10 drivers in our organization, that’s going to be at our fingertips. Instead of adding more human bodies to crunch data, we can take that capital and deploy it back into the organization in things that matter, like safety, compliance and operations.”
The AI automation functions push reports about errant drivers to fleet managers, rather than requiring them to search proactively. Domengeaux also cites a recent incident where a chief of police contacted him about one of United Vision Logistics’ drivers causing property damage. Except that dashcam video with GPS data proved the driver was nowhere near that location at the time. This prevented the driver from being erroneously cited and the incident could be used to show other drivers how the cameras were protecting them.
Massive oilfield service company Halliburton has had similar experiences, over a shorter timeframe. “We started with Motive in 2023,” says Jason Ramsey, North American Land Transportation Manager, Halliburton. “Our Canadian provinces had our significant first implementation. Our first implementation in the United States was in our Northeast area, shortly thereafter, and we then activated the cameras in the first part of 2025. We’ve been slowly integrating the AI functions and the rest of the system through the Motive platform.”
Like United Vision Logistics, Halliburton’s most significant benefit from Motive technology has also been safety. “Both preventable and non-preventable accidents have been 65 to 75% down on both of those categories,” says Ramsey. “We don’t have a lot of accidents, but being Halliburton, we’re always exposed to litigation. The cameras have adjudicated 80 to 90% of those claims. That is the main selling point that we communicate with our drivers. We have 90 to 95% driver acceptance of all our systems. We’re getting millions of dollars of liability exposure reduction, far outweighing the potential cost of deploying Motive technology. It has been one of our most important investments across the board.”
Is Edge AI Motive’s Killer Feature?
Motive isn’t the only telematics company leveraging AI for its next generation of products. Unsurprisingly, competitors are taking a similar approach. Major competitor Geotab emphasized AI at its big conference earlier in 2026, while Samsara also claims its dashcams are imbued with AI. Makani argues that the dual cameras on its AI Dashcam Plus provide differentiation, but also the tight partnership with Qualcomm, which provides the processors in Motive’s new products.
“We believe the future is where AI happens on the edge,” says William Xu, Camera and IoT Semiconductor Leader, Qualcomm. “Right now, the whole industry is building out infrastructure for the cloud for the ChatGPT moment.” However, the Qualcomm Dragonwing 6490 chip in Motive’s AI Dashcam Plus offers 12 TOPS of local AI processing power, enabling considerable edge processing, while other versions of this SoC can go up to 100 TOPS. “Motive runs over 30 different algorithms concurrently on its AI Dashcam Plus, such as audio noise reduction, and communication.” The Motive AI Dashcam Plus can also predict the trajectory of oncoming vehicles, providing sufficient advanced warning of a collision for drivers to take mitigating action. For this to work, it’s not possible to send data to the cloud and wait for a response – the latency would be too great. Having fast enough local processing is essential.
Qualcomm sees this as just the beginning of edge AI capabilities, stretching way beyond telematics. “We’re not viewing Motive as a company just working on fleet management,” says Xu. “We look at them as a platform that is automating the physical workflow. The way they apply the intelligence and understanding about this market is directly applicable to a lot of different verticals when they move the software stack over, and that’s the bigger opportunity.”
Agentic AI is a huge part of this, proactively enabling automation. This could work in parallel with the AI that is being built into consumer vehicles, such as Grok in Teslas and Gemini in Volvos. However, Motive provides a special service that can’t be delivered by generic AI. “OEMs are embedding telematics into their vehicles today, but customers still need a third party to aggregate and normalize, and that’s what we do. Because you’re installing our dash cams in every single vehicle, we have an opportunity to be an interface for drivers that is unique to the commercial work that they do.”
One new features of the Motive AI Dashcam Plus is the ability to detect road signs, so drivers can be sure of speed changes that supersede outdated satnav information. “We are going to extend beyond speed signs into general traffic enforcement,” says Makani. “A lot of what we’re hearing from our customers is about the accuracy of our AI. We’re winning head-to-head in trials. It’s the difference between a collision prevented, a life saved, or not. This is where our strength really comes through.”
