Stellantis has been fostering a culture of innovation through efforts such as Star*Up, an internal competition in which employees around the world present their ideas. The hearing-impaired worker who narrowly avoided a crash shared her idea for hazard notifications during Star*Up, which drove Stellantis to adopt the HAAS Alert system.
The automaker first tested the warnings without sound, then added beeps to grab a driver’s attention based on customer feedback. The HAAS Alert team worked with Stellantis on-site during the early testing rounds.
Trpko Blazevski, Stellantis’ manager of global innovation and digital partnerships, said the architecture of the automaker’s vehicles allowed it to seamlessly push the over-the-air update. The idea for the alerts “really hit our heartstrings,” he said.
“We said we need to implement this. We need to do something for our customers,” Blazevski said. “So we did that very quickly to deliver this. It was key and critical based on her experience that this can’t be model year ’24. We have to go back as far as we can and make this available to our existing customers that have our vehicles on the road today.”
