Haas Alert Secures $5M Seed Funding for Automotive Collision Prevention

HAAS Alert Secures $5 Million Seed Funding for Collision Prevention Technology

HAAS Alert, a provider of real-time automotive collision prevention solutions for public safety and roadway workforces, has successfully raised $5 million in seed funding. The company intends to utilize these funds to expand its sales and marketing initiatives and to further invest in research and development, particularly concerning vehicle-to-vehicle (V2X) and vehicle-to-infrastructure technologies.

Investment Details

The funding round was spearheaded by R^2 and Blu Ventures, with significant participation from TechNexus, Stacked Capital, Urban Us, Techstars, Ride Ventures, and Gramercy Fund.

Leveraging Cellular Technology for Enhanced Roadway Safety

HAAS Alert’s system utilizes cellular-based sensors to gather data regarding roadway hazards from the immediate surroundings of a vehicle. This data feeds into its predictive technology, which then delivers timely digital alerts directly to drivers via their vehicle’s integrated systems.

The company’s Safety Cloud, a proprietary digital alerting system, is currently deployed across a diverse range of fleet vehicles. This includes those operated by fire departments, ambulance services, police forces, as well as tow trucks, construction crews, waste management vehicles, and school buses.

HAAS Alert reports that at least eight vehicle manufacturers are now pre-installing Safety Cloud on their fleet vehicles as standard equipment.

Addressing a Critical Safety Need

“Emergency personnel, towing professionals, construction teams, and similar municipal fleets face disproportionately high rates of collisions resulting in serious injury or fatality,” explained Jeremy Agulnek, Senior Vice President of Connected Vehicle at HAAS Alert, in a statement to TechCrunch. “These groups are essential to our communities, and all drivers encounter them regularly on the roads.”

Agulnek further emphasized that many of these professions are inherently dangerous, and struck-by incidents remain a leading cause of death for workers in these fields.

The Role of ADAS and V2X Technologies

HAAS Alert believes that advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and V2X technology represent the key to improving roadway safety. The company’s strategy is to initially focus on protecting those at the highest risk, with plans for future expansion.

“Our focus isn’t on using connected vehicles for entertainment or general connectivity; it’s specifically about enhancing safety,” stated Agulnek. “By connecting and safeguarding these vital workers, we can introduce a connected vehicle experience to all drivers and infrastructure, simultaneously improving community safety. Prioritizing safety for first responders and roadway personnel is crucial for advancing mobility.”

Current Impact and Future Goals

To date, Safety Cloud has been implemented in vehicles operating within over 750 public and private organizations, collectively sending more than 1 billion safety alerts.

HAAS Alert is part of a growing trend of startups exploring V2X technology to mitigate collision risks. Securing funding is vital, as developing and maintaining the software, along with the costs of installing sensors on infrastructure and within vehicles, requires substantial investment.

The company aims to deliver 10 billion driver safety alerts by 2022, a goal that necessitates attracting partnerships within the automotive industry. Currently, HAAS Alert primarily collaborates with fleets, but anticipates that a larger fleet presence will attract more automotive customers, and vice versa.

Revenue Model and Hardware Deployment

“We implement a fee structure for fleet and agency customers to activate their roadway assets on Safety Cloud, and we also charge a subscription fee to automotive customers for access to the safety alerts, software, and related services we provide,” Agulnek clarified.

HAAS Alert is actively deploying its HA-5 Transponder hardware nationwide. This hardware enables equipped vehicles to automatically transmit digital alerts to approaching drivers when emergency lights are activated. These alerts provide drivers with advance warning of emergency personnel on or near the roadway, allowing them time to react.

Agulnek noted that hardware installation is designed to be quick and require minimal vehicle downtime.

Fleets also have the option to integrate Safety Cloud without additional hardware, utilizing the vehicle’s existing CAD, GPS, or telematics systems.

“Adding Safety Cloud alerts to a vehicle requires only a software update to receive data through the vehicle’s existing telematics capabilities, displaying driver alerts on the infotainment screen or instrument cluster,” Agulnek explained. “We recently completed a project with a car manufacturer that implemented alerts within their vehicles in under a week.”

Flexible Computing Architecture

According to Agulnek, computations are performed either in the cloud or on the edge, utilizing chips within the hardware. This allows the alerting logic to reside in HAAS Alert’s cloud, a vehicle OEM’s cloud, the vehicle’s head unit, or a hybrid architecture.

Additional Features and Services

The Safety Cloud includes a standard fleet management platform, the Situational Awareness Dashboard, designed to facilitate collaboration between agencies across different jurisdictions. HAAS Alert also offers optional add-ons tailored to specific industries.

Responder-to-Responder (R2R) features a set of lights installed inside a vehicle that sends notifications to responders when other Safety Cloud-equipped vehicles are in active response mode and approaching the same intersection.

FleetFusion enables customers to integrate real-time data from Safety Cloud into internal dashboards, third-party applications, and traffic management centers.

This article has been updated to reflect new information from HAAS alert regarding the number of vehicle manufacturers that include Safety Cloud standard on fleet vehicles.