Localiza, the largest car rental operator in South America, announced on Jan. 21 a multi-year enterprise agreement with CalAmp, a telematics and connected car solutions provider.

The partnership will leverage CalAmp’s AI-enabled connected vehicle technology to develop new mobility business models for Localiza such as a subscription-based car rental program, the companies said in a statement.

The partnership is also intended to reduce the barrier to entry for ride-share drivers, a key rental demographic in Brazil. Localiza and CalAmp first partnered in 2015 to install telematics on Localiza vehicles.

With CalAmp's technology and Localiza's fleet management software platform, Localiza is able to manage vehicles across its rental fleet in real-time to better understand vehicle status such as battery health, road traffic, location, preventive maintenance, and servicing. 

"This multi-year partnership represents an important milestone in our journey to continuously offer innovative mobility solutions to our customers," said João Ávila, Operations VP of Localiza.

"This is an important partnership for CalAmp," said Arym Diamond, chief revenue officer for CalAmp. "CalAmp is dedicated to international expansion and excited to increase our reach throughout Latin America working with Localiza as our partner. Together, we are working to add more value-added telematics technologies for all types of fleet management applications across the globe."

Localiza, which rents cars through corporate and franchised locations, also specializes in providing vehicles to corporate and commercial fleets. The publicly traded company has 580 rental locations and over 275,000 fleet vehicles in Brazil and six other South American countries. In Brazil, Localiza has a market share of 32.3%, larger than the second and third ranked competitors combined.

Irvine, Calif.-based CalAmp, owners of the LoJack brand, provides Internet of Things software applications, cloud services, data intelligence, and telematics products and services. CalAmp has been publicly traded since 1983 and has 20 million products installed and over 1.3 million software and services subscribers worldwide.