System and method for allocating vehicles across a pool of customers in a subscription vehicle service

A method for a computer system to optimize the assignment of vehicles within a fleet of vehicles, across a pool of multiple users, the method comprising:

• a server accessing network accessible data pertaining to the pool of multiple users in the process of generating a forecast, wherein the forecast is created to include information that identifies a plurality of customers, wherein each of the plurality of customers are users from the pool of multiple users that have requested a vehicle, and the vehicle needs for each of the plurality of customers;
• maintaining a fleet of vehicles available to be assigned to customers within the pool of multiple users and installing telematics devices in each of the vehicles of the fleet of vehicles;
• for each particular customer of the plurality of customers, the server receiving data over a network, wherein the data is generated by one or more of the telematics devices within a vehicle asset associated with the particular customer of the plurality of customers;
• for each particular customer of the plurality of customers in the forecast, the server examining a fleet inventory list maintained on the server to create a group of available vehicles that coincide with the vehicle needs of the particular customer as presented in the forecast and that coincides with the received data for that particular customer;
• the server applying heuristics to cull the group of available vehicles for each customer by:
• (a) removing vehicles that are outside of a threshold distance from the particular customer, and
• (b) removing vehicles that do not have an availability within a threshold period of time;
• the server generating a plurality of vehicle assignment scenarios based at least in part on the customers identified in the forecast and the culled group of available vehicles for each particular customer, wherein each of the one or more sets of vehicle assignment scenarios includes a pairing of each particular customer in the plurality of customers and a vehicle selected from the culled group of available vehicles for each particular customer;
• the server calculating a value that is the expected revenue to be generated for each of the plurality of vehicle assignment scenarios less the cost associated with the implementation of each of the plurality of vehicle assignment scenarios;
• the server assigning a score to each of the plurality of vehicle assignment scenarios based on the calculated value;
• the server selecting one or more vehicle assignment scenarios based on the score assigned to the vehicle assignment scenarios;
• the server optimizing the selected vehicle assignment scenarios by:
• identifying particular vehicle to customer assignments in the selected vehicle assignment scenarios that have a customer satisfaction score below a threshold value;
• and
• modifying the particular assignment to obtain a higher customer satisfaction score or identify one or more incentives to offer the customer associated with the particular vehicle to customer assignment to increase the satisfaction score;
• and
• the server selecting an optimal vehicle assignment scenario by selecting the vehicle assignment scenario in which the sum of the customer satisfaction scores for each of the customer vehicle assignment pairs in the vehicle assignment scenario is maximized;
• the server generating a vehicle assignment scenario report to provide to system operators for implementing the selected optimal vehicle assignment scenario to deliver and recover vehicles between the pool of multiple users.